Promotional poster for the movie “The Holdovers” (Al Jazeera)

Director Alexander Payne is famous for presenting films about characters that you cannot love at first sight, some of whom you actually hate at first sight, but he takes viewers on a journey that explores that inside every human being there is something deeper than just silly actions or rude behavior, and without any direct explanation. Or moral messages that make the spectator fall in love with his characters as he himself does.

“The Holdovers” is the latest film presented by Alexander Payne. It stars Paul Gimatti in another successful collaboration between him and the director, and Dominic Sessa in a role that took him from the stage of new face to the next star, and Davin Joey Randolph.”

The film was nominated for and won a large number of awards, the most recent of which was 5 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing.

The film "The Holdovers" was nominated for 5 Oscars (Source: IMDB)

A story that has been seen before

The movie "The Rest" surprises the viewer from the first sight. It looks like a movie that has been watched dozens of times before. It begins by introducing us to Paul Hunnam, a teacher at a private boarding school in the United States during the 1970s. A man who is equally strict with his students and colleagues, and does not care that he is unpopular. Rather, he enjoys his hatred. His only concern is implementing the rules of the ancient school in which he previously studied and currently teaches.

The school principal punishes "Paul", as a result of his refusal to change the results of one of his students from the upper class, and forces him to stay in school during the New Year's holidays with the "remaining" students, that is, those who will not return to their families' homes during this long holiday and are forced to stay in the school with a teacher to maintain... For their safety.

As the holiday begins, only 3 people remain in the school: teacher Paul and student Agnus, whose mother recently married and went on her honeymoon, leaving her teenage son at school to devote herself to her new life, and Mary, the school cafeteria director who recently lost her young son in the Vietnam War. .

Claiming that “The Remainers” looks like a movie that has been seen before is not a slander, as it actually has a simple story that has been presented dozens of times about the survival of a limited number of characters in an isolated place and then they gradually begin to open up about their past and build relationships among themselves that did not exist before this circumstance. But what makes all the difference is the delicacy with which the film's script built its characters and the compassionate view of their flaws before their advantages.

Paul Hunnam can be seen as a school teacher full of bitterness because of his failure, a bitterness that he takes out on his students, whose financial and social status he is jealous of. But at the same time, the film showed us simple glimpses of his past, which was stolen from him, just as one of his colleagues stole his research during his university studies and caused... He was expelled and his academic future was lost. Returning to the high school he attended as a teenager and saving him from a toxic home environment became his last resort. While Angus, the spoiled, manipulative, foul-mouthed student, secretly suffers from depression after his father was diagnosed with a mental illness that required him to stay in an asylum for the rest of his life, and his mother’s marriage and separation from both of them, his newly built relationship with his teacher reflects his need for a mature person to help him get through this difficult period of... His life.

As for “Mary,” the isolated, drunk, angry black woman, she lived her life building a distinguished future for her son, and she worked in this school specifically to ensure that he joined it - an honor that many people of African descent do not receive - but because she was unable to support his university studies in the same way, the young man decided to join the army. The Vietnam War came and all her dreams were wasted.

“The Rest” depends primarily on the performance of its heroes, after giving each of them an integrated personality, including human complexity (IMDB)

Is it really a wonderful life?

Similarities can be seen between "The Remainers" and the classic "It's a Wonderful Life": both are set during Christmas, but unlike the lighter holiday films, they are films about two men bitter about their past, living a life they didn't want. Never, and the ghost of this past continued to haunt them to erase all their hopes for the future, and instead of the angel in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” who leads the hero on a journey into his past and shows him the future of the world without his presence to explain to him the importance of his life, “Paul” in the movie “The Rest” goes through the same journey. With Angus, he regains his faith in himself and his ability to change his future for the better.

It is difficult to watch a movie anticipating what will happen in it next, scene after scene, but it is easy to do so with the movie “The Rest,” which does not care about surprising the viewer or breaking the horizon of his expectations, but rather in the image through which he presents his plot, and relies mainly on the performance of his heroes after giving each of them a fully integrated personality. There is human complexity in it, and the film presents the best performance ever by actor Paul Giamatti, for whom he has so far won a Golden Globe and a Critics’ Award, and rivals what he presented before with the same director in 2004 in “Sideways.”

The movie “The Rest” can be considered a “Christmas” movie, but in the opposite way. It addresses those who cannot feel happy during the holidays, but are burdened by these occasions with the self-reflections and comparisons they bring with others, reminding them of the decisions they made at the beginning of the year that they were unable to implement and the things they decided to do. They abstained from it and then returned to it once a week had passed after the New Year. The film ends with a similar set of decisions, leaving the viewer with a feeling of sorrow mixed with hope, as he and the film characters went through an adventure that made him fall in love with her and then leave her to her fate.

Source: Al Jazeera