In looking over the Best Picture contenders for this year, there aren’t many that light a pathway out of the misery of right now. Most of the movies on offer are either a condemnation or a reckoning. That does seem to scratch the itch of some, especially for those who write about movies and the Oscar race. But on the brink of World War III, many might yearn for something that takes us out of the misery and toward a brighter future.
Right now, there is only one movie in the Oscar race that offers that on a universal and not identity-specific level, and that is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. Could it be we’re all underestimating this movie’s chances to be the movie voters like best? Maybe. Maybe not.
Let’s look at the lineup per Gold Derby. Here are the top 10:
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
Barbie
The Holdovers
Maestro
Past Lives
American Fiction
The Color Purple
Anatomy of a Fall
On the bubble:
The Zone of Interest
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Air
Saltburn
Napoleon
When you look at The Holdovers, you can see it is very much the one movie not like the others (I would add The Killer to this list, as it easily lands in the top tier of the best films of 2023). It isn’t condemning American history or the patriarchy. It isn’t about a terrible time in our history or anxiety about our modern age. It isn’t about oppression or female empowerment. It isn’t about racism or commenting on white guilt. All these themes have defined the Oscar race recently, without a doubt.
But it’s the one film in the race does what movies — and especially Oscar winners — have traditionally done: send us out of the theaters feeling better about ourselves and our lives. The Holdovers is not just about students stuck at his boarding school over the Christmas holiday. Still, it is a “holdover” from a different era, when the point of movies wasn’t to send us into the bathroom to stare at ourselves in the mirror awash in existential angst, where we then hit the sheets or toss and turn with night terrors about our terrible world.
In decades past (and even today) people turned to God or religion for relief and salvation. Me, I turned to movies. I don’t always need movies to be “feel-good,” but when they are, it’s worth noticing.
The Holdovers is warm-hearted. It just tells a good story. We get to know the characters. We follow their narratives through to the end. And just as both Sideways and About Schmidt wind their way back to humanity through forgiveness, tolerance, and gratitude, so too does The Holdovers remind us of the good things within all of us, even the most broken among us.
Most striking of all is how, like Barbie and Oppenheimer, it reaches audiences across all spectrums. Someone sent me a link to this piece by a Conservative Christian writer who notes how unusual it is to see a film that offers up good male role models:
Finally Some Respect for Boys and Men
Watching The Holdovers I realized that it offers a healthier depiction of male mentorship than the culture has been giving us over the last few decades. Sitcom males are awkward, stupid, clumsy and display no Christian fierceness or piety. Men in science fiction movies are absent or dolts who need to be corrected by female superiors. Even healthy aggression gets tarred as “toxic masculinity.”
Most informed and honest people are familiar with the statistics about fatherless boys: Young men who grow up in homes without fathers are twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families, have a higher risk of suicide and behavioral disorders, and are much more likely to drop out of school.
Yes, these figures are striking and support the case, often made by conservatives, that fathers are indispensable. But there is also something to be said for the argument that it takes many male mentors to raise a boy. There once was a time when young men from bad homes could find role models in churches, the military, in local businesses, or even just fixing cars around the neighborhood. The Holdovers champions that reality.
At a time when so many young men in this country have felt lost and abandoned, with not many male heroes to look up to, here is one that stands out as the exception at a necessary time. I don’t 100% agree with the above passage, but I think it’s still a worthy message. It makes a film that might not seem “important” to critics and Film Twitter, but it’s important all the same.
I think that will make a difference heading into the season, even if it isn’t a movie that sets Film Twitter aflame with enthusiasm. The Holdovers isn’t likely to make critics lists. There was a time when the Oscar race wasn’t a reality show that lasted months and months, where one movie outwits, outlasts, and outplays the others. There was a time when it was actually up to Oscar voters themselves and not the hive mind that decided these things.
Oscar voters have attempted, once or twice, to break out of the WALL-E-like hold the machine has on the Oscar race. They defiantly chose CODA, a film with only three nominations, for Best Picture, because they didn’t like the other choices. I see it kind of like when the captain on the ship decides he wants to start thinking for himself.
The race should still be considered wide open, not fixed, and not easily predictable. We tend to get trapped in a groove, all of us, making it harder for voters, critics, or bloggers to break free from that. It isn’t that everyone is predicting the SAME movie to win: at the moment, it’s all over the place at Gold Derby with Kevin Polowy still insisting Origin will win.
Scratch that, he’s now predicting American Fiction:
American Fiction is a good choice right now. It is all things wrapped into one. I have not yet seen it, but by all accounts it’s funny, it’s provocative, and, like Barbie, offers up the rare bit of dissent against the status quo. It has the benefit of not being directed by a white male, whereas all of the other frontrunners (except Barbie) are. Will that mean anything? I don’t know.
It is more healthy for the Oscar race and for all of the films involved to not get locked into a groove right now, in November. It is also healthy for voters to relax the strident rules of late a little and try to get back to doing what the Oscars have always done: award the best. And that translates to what you like, not what will signal your virtue the hardest, not what will “go viral” on Twitter (who cares?), but what your work and your experience have taught you makes a good movie.
I think the Oscar race has painted itself into a corner, with the help of people like me, and expects Hollywood to “right the wrongs of society” and reflect the work of Good Puritans, or Good Liberals. But that has all but wrecked it. No one needs to invest their time to be given a lecture on what is right and wrong by artists.
I’ve seen a few movies of late (I won’t say which ones) that feel the need to do a “woke rebrand” of a familiar story. That is to “fix” our outdated ideas that are now considered “wrong-think.” When they do that, though, they’ve maybe made a movie that a former Tumblr influencer might find valuable but offers little else. The “lessons” we take from any film should be something we figure out, not something that is told to us.
I know those at the top, those who run Hollywood, are terrified of losing everything in an instant with one Twitter dust-up. They’re worried about being called out for “normalizing” whatever offense it might be, from cultural appropriation to “problematic” age differences to not making the female empowered. They are worried they will get agonizing think pieces in high-minded magazines like Vanity Fair or The Daily Beast. I get it. It isn’t fun to be “it” in a day.
Considering we’re now living in a panopticon, we all have to learn to live with being “it” and to brush it off like it does not matter. Because guess what? It does not matter.
When I think about the best films of the year and my mind goes to “oh well it’s written and directed by white men,” I feel the entire dream of art punctured like a hot air balloon. It can no longer dazzle us in the sky. It can no longer take us anywhere. It can no longer take flight. It is just yet another punishment against the high achievers.
The Holdovers is a film you can sit anyone down in front of, and they will get it even if they do not love it. That means anyone: a waitress, a truck driver, a mailman, a pilot, a politician, a day laborer…anyone. It doesn’t bedazzle those who get to see movies for free, but that’s because they don’t need movies for the same reason most people do. They aren’t looking for relief. They aren’t worried about spending that $20 on a movie ticket. They are only worried about going down the rabbit hole with Alice yet again.
What I know about the Oscar race for Best Picture, particularly with the ranked-choice ballot, is that our hearts will drive those votes. We can’t yet know what that will mean in a few months. These are dark times with no end in sight. But you might want to think about the feel-good aspect of any of the frontrunners.
Movies do many things for us. Although it seems they do less and less these days, a feel-good movie still does what no other kind of movie can. It’s why I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life more times than I can count. And why I plan to watch The Holdovers until, as with Sideways, I know every damned line.
Here are this week’s predictions:
Best Picture
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Barbie
The Holdovers
American Fiction
Poor Things
The Killer
Past Lives
Maestro
Anatomy of a Fall
Alt: Zone of Interest, The Boys in the Boat, Napoleon, The Color Purple, Rustin, All of Us Strangers, Nyad
Best Director
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Greta Gerwig, Barbie
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Alexander Payne, The Holdover
David Fincher, The Killer
Alt: Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things; Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall; Bradley Cooper, Maestro; Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest; George Clooney, The Boys in the Boat; Celine Song, Past Lives; Cord Jefferson, American Fiction
Best Actor
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Alt: Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction; Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers; Michael Fassbender, The Killer; Joaquin Phoenix, Napoleon
Best Actress
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Emma Stone, Poor Things
Margot Robbie, Barbie
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall
Alt: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Origin; Fantasia Barrino, The Color Purple; Natalie Portman, May December; Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla
Supporting Actor
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
Alt: Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers; Willem Dafoe, Poor Things; Matt Damon, Oppenheimer
Supporting Actress
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Jodie Foster, Nyad
America Ferrera, Barbie
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Tilda Swinton, The Killer
Alt: Juliet Binoche, The Taste of Things; Julianne Moore, May December; Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple; Sandra Huller, The Zone of Interest; Taraji P. Henson, The Color Purple; Vanessa Kirby, Napoleon
Adapted Screenplay
American Fiction
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
The Killer
Alt: All of Us Strangers, The Color Purple, The Zone of Interest
Original Screenplay
Barbie
The Holdovers
Past Lives
Anatomy of a Fall
Maestro
Editing
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
The Killer
Poor Things
The Holdovers
Cinematography
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Killer
Maestro
Costumes
Poor Things
Barbie
Napoleon
Maestro
Killers of the Flower Moon
Production Design
Poor Things
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Animated Feature
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Boy and the Heron
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
Elemental
Wish
Score
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
The Killer
Poor Things
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
