It’s an oft-heard refrain, usually from someone bemoaning the latest big-screen reboot or unnecessary sequel: “They just don’t make movies like they used to anymore!”
I’m not going to argue that we’re not in a peak franchise era. Currently in Toronto multiplexes, your movie-viewing options include the second sequel in an animated franchise based on a 1960s toy sensation (Trolls Band Together), the prequel to a young-adult franchise premised on children murdering each other (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), the THIRTY-THIRD entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (The Marvels), and an Exorcist reboot no one asked for… or wants, if the box-office performance is any indication. However, the last few months have also featured a continually steady roll-out of original films by beloved directors. It’s an embarrassment of riches, actually: as of this writing, you could go see Killers of the Flower Moon, Priscilla, Saltburn, Next Goal Wins, Napoleon, The Killer, May December, Dream Scenario, and Anatomy of Fall. I’ll even throw Thanksgiving in there for the horror lovers.
Are all these movies good? I don’t know, I haven’t seen ‘em all yet! What I do know is that they’re all the kind of non-IP-driven adult entertainment that people love to claim no one is making anymore, throwing it back to the era of films that Martin Scorsese et al. long for.
If we’re going to talk about cinematic throwbacks, though, we’ve got to acknowledge the undeniable truth: no one this year is doing it quite like Alexander Payne. When I saw The Holdovers at TIFF earlier this year, I was immediately charmed by the director’s commitment to a bygone aesthetic. From the opening title credits, everything from the font choice to the visible grain of the film makes it clear that he’s leaning into a retro look for the movie.
Payne is making this choice on more than one level, however; it goes deeper than just the visuals. It infuses everything from the narrative, a classic “unlikely duo” tale, to the marketing materials, which wouldn’t feel out of place in the 1990s or early 2000s. Between the poster’s giant smashed ornament, to the trailer’s use of voice-over and freeze-frames, it’s all a little corny, but in a way that feels deliberately evocative of the movie marketing of olde (or at least, a few decades ago). Nothing pleased me more than the way the trailer makes use of three different pieces of scoring with jarringly opposing energies – it’s subtle, but if you watch a lot of movie trailers, you get what he’s trying to do.
Of course, all these choices would work as little more than gimmicks if the movie weren’t actually good. I’m pleased to report that that’s not the case. The Holdovers is sweet and salty in equal measure, capturing the particular mix of gloom and pleasure the holiday season can bring. Paul Giamatti stars as Paul Hunham, a cantankerous professor of ancient history at an upscale New England private school. Unpopular with both his colleagues and his pupils, Mr. Hunham finds himself saddled with the unenviable job of caretaking for the boys left behind at the school over holiday break. Joining him in Christmastime isolation are the school’s head cook Mary (Da’vine Joy Randolph), who’s grieving a major loss, and Angus Tully (Dominic Sassa), a prickly, too-smart for his own good student, abandoned for the holidays by his mother and her new beau. As the Christmas break progresses through a series of misadventures, what begins as a wary co-existence between the three slowly morphs into a kind of kinship.
Reading the above summary, you might be thinking to yourself, “Okay, I’ve seen that one before.” That’s a fair assessment – Payne isn’t exactly breaking new narrative ground with The Holdovers. If you’ve watched a few movies in your life, you won’t find too many surprises in the basic beats of the plot. But we revisit these kinds of stories for a reason. The pleasures of The Holdovers aren’t found in watching a film that’s making major storytelling innovations, but rather in watching a film taking a beloved storytelling trope, and doing it really, really well, giving it emotional resonance and peppering it with subtle commentary on class, grief, and child-rearing. Besides, this is a Christmas story – and isn’t Christmas all about tradition, and returning to the well of beloved, familiar routines for comfort?
Speaking of returning to the well, this film marks Paul Giamatti’s second collaboration with Alexander Payne. He’s one of the best in the biz at playing “just a regular guy” type roles, and I admire his commitment to the goofy unlikeability required to play Mr. Hunham, as well as the way he delicately sands off some of the teacher’s harder edges as the plot unspools. Much has already been made of Da’vine Joy Randolph’s generous, moving performance, deservedly so, and Dominic Sassa more than holds his own in his very first big-screen role. Ultimately, The Holdovers only works if these three work well together, and they do, making audiences buy into their cobbled-together holiday family and the genuine care growing between them. It’s also worth noting that The Holdovers is technically billed as a comedy, and despite the more melancholic aspects of the plot, it’s often quite funny.
Over the past year, other movies have surprised me more, have enraged me more, have made me laugh harder, and have made me gasp louder. Yet out of everything I’ve seen, this movie might be the one I felt the most content to just exist in, patiently waiting for the story to progress in its thoughtful, unhurried way. It’s a pleasure to spend the holidays with Payne’s decent, complicated characters, and I foresee a great future for this film as a Christmas classic. Who knows? Maybe in another twenty years, some family will be sitting around after their annual viewing of The Holdovers, looking at each other and saying, “You know, they just don’t make movies like that anymore!”
The Holdovers is out in theatres now.
