Vital Topics: Social Work & Film
by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD
With regularity, newly minted social workers tell me that they feel ill prepared to understand their clients’ “inner world”—how all of us evolve as the people we are. I respond that the best way to understand our clients is to understand ourselves, and one of the best ways to understand both is through the arts—film, plays, poetry, and other literature and artistic expression.
Toward this goal, I bring you a new film, The Holdovers, in which director Alexander Payne unites once again with his Sideways star, Paul Giamatti, adding Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa (and a superb ensemble cast) to his brilliant, messy, utterly unpredictable snapshot of real life and how the three principals in the film evolve into who they are, while buried within each is who they long to be.
Nominated for five Academy Awards and with the tag line "discomfort and joy," The Holdovers is a Christmas film and a Valentine, and a promise that despite the harshness of winter, spring will be ours. You will know from early moments that this film will not leave us with a syrupy “happy ending,” but will instead offer important resolves. Although I will describe the three principals, I will not discuss the many startling plot twists and turns. In our wrap-up, I will focus on film messages that echo social work awareness and values and conclude with questions you may wish to address with your clients and students, as well as use for self-reflection.
The time period is 1970 to 1971, as the Vietnam war is escalating, prior to the enormous impact of the technological revolution and its breathlessly accompanying changes. Shot digitally, The Holdovers looks precisely like the period depicted. The setting is the fictional Barton Academy, an elite New England boarding school where ambitious, powerful families send their sons (daughters not welcome) as prep to admission to the most competitive colleges—and to bond, useful for future success. The holiday break is beginning, and Paul Hunham (Giamatti), an acerbic classics scholar with special kinship for ancient civilizations, has been assigned the care of students who have no place to go. Neither does Hunham, but he seemingly longs to be left alone. Hunham has given a failing grade to the son of a Senator, graduate, and enormous contributor, causing Princeton to revoke admission. This assignment is his punishment.
The three principals are Paul Hunham, Angus Tully, and Mary Lamb.
Hunham, a seeming curmudgeon, was young when his mother died, and his father was so rejecting that Hunham left home at age 15, never to return. Hunham has a “lazy eye” (amblyopia) and a medical condition (trimethylaminuria) that leaves his body with an unpleasant, unresolvable odor. He sees himself as an untouchable, both unworthy and repellant.
His student is the highly intelligent, piercingly lonely misfit Angus Tully (Sessa), whose self-absorbed mother in a heartbreaking early scene abruptly cancels their family Christmas. She and her new husband need time together and without him. (Later, we learn about the importance of Angus’ father in his life.) Angus hides his torment by constant acting out. If he repeats his pattern of being expelled from various schools, he will be sent to military school, and eventually to Vietnam.
Mary Lamb (Randolph) is Barton’s head cook. We learn that her son, Curtis, had been able to attend Barton because of his mom’s employment there. Although Curtis had been accepted at Swarthmore, with financial aid, the funding was inadequate, and Curtis died in Vietnam. Mary overflows with decency, rage, grief, and longing.
The Holdovers depicts what social workers know—love offered a child leads to a reliable “emotional sense of direction,” necessary to navigate the slippery slopes and inevitable losses and tragedies of life. We also know that sustaining love does not have to be offered by parents. Often, it is offered by social workers and our close allies, “natural social workers.” As riveting, unanticipated events evolve in The Holdovers, this is the love we see Mary and Hunham offer Angus, and each other. They become a true family, with strengths internalized (to be called upon) by each.
Through the authenticity of The Holdovers, we bear witness to something extraordinary. We experience raw pain bravely faced and integrated, with hope for the future. Through the genius of the highest possible quality writing, direction, and acting, we see—we feel—social work process—how torment can finally be lifted and how our clients, like Hunham, Angus, and Mary, are able to move forward, embracing long buried dreams they have not felt entitled to. And new ones.
I conclude with my hope that you will soon enjoy Cherries Jubilee, made as you wish. You will know why after you gift YourSelf The Holdovers.
Suggested questions to consider with clients, students, and for self-reflection (to be used, edited, discarded, added to) in a setting of agreed upon confidentiality:
- Why did Paul Hunham (Giamatti) hold tightly to Virgil, author of The Aeneid, regarded as the greatest Roman poet? Could he have hoped to be seen as heroic and brave, first by his parents, then through his teaching? Was he offering his students someone to emulate? Are there parallels between the Vietnam War and the time of change and upheaval marking Virgil’s poetry?
- What are your thoughts about hope? How important is it in times of despair? How does one find the strength, despite all, to hold onto it?
- Let’s examine the lives of Paul Hunham, Mary Lamb, and Angus Tully. In what ways did their past impact their present? What are your thoughts about their growth in this film? Specific incidences?
- Do you see any of your clients in the characters we meet in The Holdovers? (If so, disguise them in your sharing.) Do you see shades of your own challenges, either to share or perhaps address through journaling?
- What roles have “natural social workers” played in the lives of your clients? In your own life? What is a natural social worker, and which character(s) in The Holdovers do you see in this role?
SaraKay Smullens, LCSW, BCD, CGP, CFLE, coined the terms “natural social worker,” and “an emotional sense of direction.” She views “natural social workers” as our necessary, trusted allies in all expressions of social work and advocacy, and “an emotional sense of direction” as vital in navigating life’s unpredictable, dangerous slopes. A winner of numerous awards, including NASW’s designated best magazine article published in The New Social Worker, SaraKay serves as our film critic, addressing Vital Topics in Social Work. Published widely and the author of four books, her latest is Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work: A Guidebook for Students and Those in Mental Health and Related Professions (NASW Press, 2021).