Thanks to a certain chill in the air, nights coming in early and the sudden insistence of every mall in the country to now start banging out Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You way before it’s due (it’s not even Thanksgiving yet!), it appears that Christmas is already upon us. That also means bracing for another wave of festive-themed movies coming out on various platforms, most of which will no doubt be saccharine-sweet abominations. If you take your seasonal eggnog with a generous helping of cynicism like I do, you’ll most likely be planning to stick Die Hard on the telly again once Christmas evening rolls in. But on the off chance you want a bit of genuine seasonal soul without the usual schmaltz, you’d do a lot worse than to check out The Holdovers. 

Not so much a Christmas movie as it is a movie with Christmas in it, The Holdovers nonetheless carries a good ounce of the gentle goodwill of the season at its core, even if it wears a permanently sardonic expression while doing so. It is by no means a ‘Hallmark’ movie -  frequently misanthropic, often irreverent and repeatedly hilarious, it is one of those rare films that manages to successfully provide a moving, human story (three in fact) with a cynical sense of humour in accompaniment. In many ways it’s the kind of holiday movie for our current era of Internet-induced fatigue - for those feeling worn out, tired of it all but hoping for something to warm the spirit nonetheless. And the fact that it’s deliberately designed to feel like it’s from an era as far away from the Internet as possible is probably not an uncanny coincidence.

The Holdovers centers itself around a small group of individuals - mainly three - who for differing reasons need to spend their Christmas at Barton Academy rather than returning home. First and foremost is Paul Hunham (Giamatti), a long-tenured, lazy-eyed classical professor whose love for the ancient arts is matched only by his dislike toward the students who constantly fail his class, for whom he reserves nothing but acerbic disdain. This dislike is mutually shared by his pupils, and the ‘holdover’ students who are forced to stay in school over the holidays - among them Angus Tully (Sessa) whose mother has essentially abandoned him to spend time with her new lover - would rather be anywhere than under Hunham’s constant watch. And with a small crowd remaining on site over the holidays, school cafeteria overseer Mary Lamb (Randolph), mourning the recent loss of her son in Vietnam - who was also a Barton student - is on hand as well. It’s a mixed collective in residence, each from different backgrounds and at different stages in life, and in the case of Paul and his students, none of them can stand to be around each other for anything longer than a class period. Which is naturally the perfect setup for a movie whose core theme is all about the finding of common ground in unusual circumstances, and the bonds that result - which The Holdovers delivers on and executes beautifully.

Aesthetically, this is a movie that is consistently beautiful as well. It is one that is so staunch about setting itself at the turn of the 1970s that it even looks like a production from the time, right down to the visual grain and the retro-styled logos of the more modern companies (Miramax et al) that show up in the film’s intro. But the snowbound landscapes and vaulted halls of Barton Academy - filmed on five different prep schools in the Massachusetts region - are constantly arresting and beautifully sparse. With a folk-oriented soundtrack (punctuated by Labi Siffre’s 1972 song ‘Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying’) backing the proceedings, it’s a film whose gentle verve and pace elicits the cozy atmosphere of a school out of session for the winter, and the sudden calm that can result once the horde of unruly adolescents that usually inhabit it have departed.

Even if the film dreamily drifts along, its script, penned by David Hemingson, is as sharp as a tack. It does easy work of a difficult job in juggling the stories of three different character arcs - those of Paul, Angus and Mary - throughout its two-hour run. Each of them intertwines to form a cohesive whole and do so with dialogue that is wry, humourous and outrightly caustic when it needs to be. None of the main characters are having a great time at the start of the movie. Paul’s frequent clashes with his students and need to wax lyrical about ancient history with literally anyone masks decades of wrestling with the bitterness that comes with the solitude that has set in outside of his formative years. Angus is left to contend with spending Christmas with a teacher he can’t stand while dealing with both the reality of his mother overlooking him for a new relationship, and the fate of his separated father. And Mary, who has no conflict with anyone at the Academy, has to nonetheless deal with carrying the duties of her job while grieving for the recent loss of her son, who in an even sadder twist of fate, also followed her husband to an early grave. But while each of these characters carry plenty of pathos with them, the film never treats them as outright pity cases. Instead, they’re made to co-exist with one another, their respective inner angsts in tow, and go through their relative troubles together on a backdrop that entertains the dark comedy of life instead of suffering in it. 

The film manages to achieve this in a variety of ways, but none more so than with a sudden shift in focus where a chunk of the early cast, the other ‘holdover’ students (those being Michael Provost as the easygoing Jason Smith, Brady Hepner as pent-up bully Teddy Kountze, Jim Kaplan as Korean student Ye-Joon Park and Ian Dolley as Mormon-bred Alex Ollerman) are literally choplifted out of the movie by Jason’s millionaire father who has a change of heart to pick up his son and his peers to take them on a ski trip. Prior to this the film is very reminiscent of the coming-of-age high school movies of the 70s and 80s, giving center-stage to Angus while he argues and scraps with either his Barton peers in the residence halls over porno mags, stolen photos and bad weed, or with Mr. Hunham as the latter threatens exams on the Peloponnesian War the very minute the class comes back from the Christmas holidays. After this shift, there is room for the film to focus far more on the relationships of the main cast, and the painful secrets each of them hide to come out. 

The growth in rapport between both Paul and Angus - unthinkable at the start of the film - is interestingly driven by the very thing that causes their conflicts to begin with: their shared lack of a vocal filter, especially when faced with the genuine bullshit that the world throws at them. How this bullshit comes is also a factor: initially they’re giving it to each other before the harsh realities of the world outside the school come crashing down on the pair of them. Meanwhile Mary, whose relationship with Paul already starts out cordial as they chill out together in the faculty lounge watching the quiz shows of the day, is a critical element in Paul’s own softening in his attitude towards Angus. She knows kids, having brought up one herself, and comes to be a source of sagely advice for Paul in his interactions with the troubled teenager. In return, Paul and Angus become a source of unyielding support for Mary in the times when the weight of her son’s death becomes too much to bear - especially when she over-imbibes at a Christmas party held by Lydia Crane (Carrie Preston), a former Barton faculty acquaintance of Paul’s. While they don’t necessarily all become dependent on each other as a fully-fledged support network, their time with each other unquestionably changes them - and forms the core of why The Holdovers succeeds in its ability to win the viewer over.

With Alexander Payne calling the shots directing, the performances are also of a typically high caliber. In his first on-screen acting credit, Dominic Sessa is great as Angus - sharp-tongued, articulate and headstrong like any precocious Northeast blue-blood kin, but a kid who often shows his good side, especially when the full picture of his tragic family situation is laid bare. As Mary, Da’Vine Joy Randolph is worthy of a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the Oscars next year, giving a performance as a kind soul dealing with terrible circumstances, yet remaining resilient (and even comedic) in her portrayal. She has several memorable scenes and a solid chemistry with Giamatti’s Hunham, as well as with Naheem Garcia, who appears as school custodian Danny in a fleeting but solid side role. But ultimately it is Paul Giamatti’s character who has the film’s overall focus. A man who has spent much of his life at odds with the world - and is pretty odd himself - Paul Hunham’s frustration at his students and the sarcastic wit he frequently doles out to them is not extolled out of bitterness. Rather, it is out of a need to galvanize them for a cruel, unfair world that even he still struggles to make sense out of. Whether he’s eloquently laying the verbal smackdown on his failing pupils or monologuing on random facts about Santa Claus, he is a genuine hoot. And it all comes from a good place, as awkwardly misplaced as it may be. The film’s script is tailor-made for both the character and Giamatti alike, and you can tell that the latter is having great fun relaying him on screen.

Charming and bitingly funny as it is, The Holdovers is not completely without issues. The pace of the movie can stall a little too much at times, and the atmosphere too peaceful - you kind of want there to be some bombastic, explosive revelation to occur just to wake it up a bit, even if the reveals that do come are extremely powerful. Also, for a movie that has some messages about race that it wants to get across, the minority cast simply aren’t on screen long enough for a modern movie for questions not to be asked by some circles about its integrity. While Mary’s own story is an emotional one with some deeply poignant scenes, the core focus of the film is on Paul and Angus, forcing her own arc to play second-fiddle to the coming-of-age driven squabblings of its main white protagonists. That’s still a great story in itself, but you just wonder if it’s going to be the difference between Randolph being Academy nominated for a supporting role instead of a main. I guess we’ll never know unless a more generous cut is ever released.

Nonetheless The Holdovers manages to keep what is a multi-layered and faceted story rolling along to a bittersweet and satisfying conclusion. A third act with the main trio making a field trip to Boston provides a lot of the movie’s high points, and the climax from the fall-out of that trip solidifies the smaller messages the film is trying to make into one central edict. While primarily being a heartwarming if tongue-in-cheek movie about bonding over a difficult Christmas, the film is just as much of a damning critique of the elites that draw the class lines, their need to set systems for others while cheating them themselves, and a clarion call for those less well-off (but just as well educated) to question the idea of the society that’s been molded for them. Pretty apt for a movie set right at the height of student unrest in the 20th century, and certainly a message still needed now. As both a festive dark comedy and a social commentary, The Holdovers is a triumph.