Christmas at Barton's prestigious boarding school is much more festive than the holidays themselves. The exams are over, and a future retaking of twos is unlikely to spoil anyone's mood. Even idle teachers are not eager to ask homework and indulge in New Year's idleness with their students.
It is on these days that students and teachers, the directorate and auxiliary workers are miraculously united. Everyone, like one, had squeezed their last sweaters into their suitcases a long time ago and discussed extensive vacation plans with friends. New Year 1971 is about to come, and nothing can ruin the mood of the careless and fussy crowd of children and adults alike.
Only a few sullen faces from outside look at this mess. The holidays will not bring these young poor people any family get-togethers or gifts from Santa. For various reasons, not all students will make it home or on a winter trip, and all they can do is envy their happy classmates.
Together with the local losers, the responsible teacher, whose share of supervising the dissatisfied children, and the cook, who makes sure that the stupid gurba does not starve to death, will have to spend the time together with the local losers. However, Barton was not spared the Christmas miracle this year, and most of the students left behind went to the ski resort.
The only student whose parents did not give timely permission to travel was the irrepressible Angus, locked in a boarding school for all the holidays without a single friend nearby. And the director left the strictest teacher, the historian of ancient civilizations, Mr. Hanham, as the icing on the painful cake.
His passion for Demosthenes and the Peloponnesian War can only be equaled by his adherence to principles and intolerance for the offspring of wealthy parents. For his one-year history award to the son of the school's main sponsor, he was awarded “entertainment” for the entire vacation. However, a lonely and grumpy professor is not afraid of the prospect of spending holidays in a boarding school.
“The Holdovers” by Alexander Payne is once again shown by a couple of renegades who are not recognized by society and thrown to the sidelines. Like many of the director's characters, they are not hopelessly missing martyrs, but people deeply stuck in personal problems. And like the main character of “Showing Up” Kelly Reichardt, instead of finding the cause of the troubles within themselves, they take offense at the whole world around them.
Moreover, snide Angus and sullen Hanam have no idea how much they have in common. Although they are at different levels of the social ladder, both, despite their principled views and love for freedom, are within a framework from which it is impossible to escape. One is the director, the other is the mother. And both, powerless before the system, undermine it with a barely noticeable personal rebellion.
The professor takes a sip or two of whiskey while checking his homework and bickering with the principal, who was once his student. The student, on the other hand, uses hooliganism and disobedience to make his detention as unbearable as possible. This does not prevent the powerful of this world, but the characters do not feel like laboratory mice, but like kings of their own cage.
The teacher found himself both personally and professionally a long time ago, but was disappointed in this stupid “acquisition”, whereas all roads are open to Angus. But he follows his mother's lead that he can exchange a prestigious school for a cadet corps in the blink of an eye. So he can only envy the professor's ridiculous obsession with Ancient Greece, because at least he has a passion for something.
And in order for the characters to find a common language, they are opposed to Mary, a local cook, a woman with a businesslike approach to her profession and personal life. Her tragedy goes much deeper, as she recently lost her son in the scorched fields of Vietnam. But unlike the two idiots next door, Mary lives her grief without hesitation in opening up to people and not taking the world around her with hostility.
The film readily borrows classical techniques from 1970s cinema, such as dramatic approximations and awkward close-ups, and also mimics a faded film from half a century ago. Thanks to this, Alexander Payne got rid of modern gloss and recreated the cozy atmosphere of a bygone era. And this longing echoes the disorder of one main character and the loneliness of the other.
“The Holdovers” tells a classic Christmas story about a man realizing his loneliness amid the hustle and bustle of the holidays. But where characters usually find love and care, Angus and Hanam stumble over their own position as cynicism. Instead of the usual grand finale, Alexander Payne puts the stinging idea under the tree that there is no everyday problem you can't laugh about a little bit.
