12.5.23
Jane and I really liked The Holdovers.
It’s a movie playing now, by a director I should know but don’t, starring Paul Giamatti and other actors I should know but don’t. That formulation – “should know” – alludes to an unofficial yet generally accepted standard of awareness, what folks in one’s set might be expected to have conned. Americans nowadays should know not only our President but also our former President and names like Gaetz, Santos, Taylor Greene, and Mike Johnson, alas. Baseball fans should know the teams in the World Series and maybe their starting players. Lovers of English literature should know Malory, Robert Burton, and Dr. Johnson, even if you’ve never read them (though you should).
Jane and I watch lots of stories on screens. I call them “stories on screens” because I’m not sure what constitutes movie, video, film, cinema, TV, streaming series – are these terms interchangeable? Must a movie be shown in a theater to earn the designation? Is there a hierarchy of entertainment types from lofty to lowly? Some questions you’re as sorry to have asked as Bre’er Rabbit to have smacked that Tar-baby. Let’s move on.
The Holdovers is a movie Jane and I watched on our home screen. Home alone we dine to movies, a custom which would have appalled my parents, but which we delight in. We favor stories, nothing too “artistic” one must strain to comprehend – woebegone detectives (they’re all woebegone), handsome sailors, dipsy dames who prevail, that sort of fare. Murder and mayhem are welcome provided the blood stays ketchup. I pay as much attention to our movies as I do to gravy. Sometimes we’ll watch twenty minutes of a show before realizing it’s a recent rerun.
This is not dementia – not wholly. I seldom take movies as seriously as I might a sonnet. Movies are my recreation, literature my religion. I attend the placement of syllables as vigilantly as the devout the elevation of the Host. Movies I devour, who cares how they’re cooked.
During The Holdovers, Jane and I found ourselves interjecting, “That’s good,” “Nice,” “Lovely,” between bites. We laughed, chuckled, rolled our eyes, gasped, sighed on cue. The good guys were good and the villains vile, no unsettling ambiguity. The story was formulaic (coming of age, midlife-awakening), the setting familiar (an elite prep school, much like my alma mater), but the episodes were fresh and performances pitch-perfect. None of the techno-wizardry of so many contemporary concoctions, eliciting first a wow, and then a so what. The screen was a squeaky-clean window through which we could watch events unfold.
What moved us? What tempted my tears? Why did this movie get better after its conclusion, reflowering in memory, as worthwhile art will? Affection is always educative, pointing to convictions beneath the starchy dictates of reason. Reason can argue pro or con, like a wily lawyer. Our affections are honest witnesses, who know what they know and won’t be gainsaid.
What moved me was the story, yes, a melancholy, heartfelt, and finally hopeful Christmas fable – no season so squeezes our American heart! But beyond plot and characters pulsed a confident innocence – that one could tell a good story with admirable characters and a bittersweet ending and not be clobbered as clueless; that love, grace, decency, and truth were vital forces, not pathetic fairytales. Once upon a time we believed that right might prevail over might, tomorrow was worth the trouble, and America’s promise within reach. There were good guys we could cheer on and bad guys who’d occasionally take it on the chin. We were not saps to hope!
So different from today.