The Holdovers

This has become a yearly Christmas watch for me (already), but I’m finally quantifying why this movie is so special to me. It is rare for a movie to fully encapsulate what a time and place feels like, and it is even more rare to capture it as well as The Holdovers does. The excellent score, the refreshingly warm color grading, the pleasantly vintage sound design, the way every shot feels like a warm fuzzy hug, it’s aesthetically perfect, but that’s not quite enough. The real mastery here is the way that the myriad of emotions that affect us during the holidays are used throughout the film. There’s The melancholy of loss, for those that aren’t with us to celebrate a time we know should be happy like the death of Mary’s son, played by the so-fantastic-I-have-to-include-her-here Da’vine Joy Randolph, or more unconventionally, like the mental absence of Angus Tully’s father, played by the similarly impressive Dominic Sessa. There’s regardlessly present joy for those around us, that Mary, Angus, and Hunham (played by the always phenomenal Paul Giamatti) find in each other during the less than ideal circumstances. It is in the interactions between this perfectly casted main trio that we see parallels into our own lives, the often begrudgingly admitted happiness for camaraderie around the holidays. When I talk about why I think Perfect Days is such an incredible movie, I think to the unconventional but perfect understanding of comfort. The Holdovers is almost equal in its application of that principle, in that the vintage New England winter experience is a warm cozy ride in and of itself, but that the bond formed through the two leads, through their fights and the admissions of their own deeply seated flaws, is a place where anyone can find a message of assurance that their own deeply flawed selves are indeed capable of receiving and giving love.