The Trammeled

Last night I watched The Holdovers (2023). There'd been a hundred holds on the library DVD for a long time, but finally it was available everywhere.

It is so good, but I only watched it because Michael highly recommended it (twice, in his 4-sentence movie reviews). I wouldn't have otherwise because I'd hated Sideways (2004), by the same director (Alexander Payne) and actor (Paul Giamatti).  In that movie, Giamatti's character, an alcoholic, fucked up, failed writer, ends up on the porch of a warm-hearted woman, who takes him in. I related to the woman, and I wanted to yell, "DON'T TAKE HIM IN:
that line about 'love will save you' is bullshit!"

That's not the story in The Holdovers. Here, the alcoholic, fucked up, failed writer shows up for someone else.
You can almost imagine it's the same character, twenty years later––that of course the thing with the nice woman didn't work, and the man is bitter and dead inside. All the worst has come to pass and he, now a teacher at a New England boarding school, is making others pay for it.
But here, he gets a chance to be the caring one, assigned to watch a troubled student (Dominic Sessa) over Christmas break, along with the school cook (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), who has recently lost her only child in Vietnam. [These actors are outstanding.]
In stepping up for this kid--slowly, reluctantly--the man finally shows up for himself too.

I've seen The Holdovers advertised as a warm, Christmas comedy. Really, it's muted and melancholy. The heat has been turned off in the emptied-out boarding school, and while it's not scary, the kid in the empty hallways and dark kitchen brought to my mind the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (also about an alcoholic, fucked up, failed writer).

There is a rah-rah scene, but this is not a tearjerker like Dead Poet's Society with its warm colors and attractive people. This is a movie about the trammeled and the funny-looking people. When they say, "You can do this", you believe them.

I'm going to buy the DVD so I can be sure to have it to watch at Christmas.

This is the song played in full over the credits of The Holdovers:
"Crying Laughing Loving Lying", by English singer-songwriter Labi Siffre, 1972.

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Interview with Siffre in The Guardian, 2022:
"‘I had the perfect life – then both my husbands died’: singer Labi Siffre on love, loss – and happiness".