The Holdovers - Themes & concerns

Barton Academy is an insulated world, where wealth, status, and institutional prestige are taken for granted, and staff and students are separated from broader social realities. The boys are educated to become future leaders and beneficiaries of existing social hierarchies, yet many seem disconnected from the consequences of those hierarchies. The physical isolation of Barton during the Christmas break reinforces this idea.

Kountze is the most obvious example of how privilege becomes entitlement and prejudice. Not only does he have every expectation that his privileged status as a wealthy white man will buy him entry to an elite college and a successful future, he also feels entitled to comment and criticise the work ethic of others:

Kountze: "I mean, I know she’s sad about her son and everything, but still, she’s being paid to do a job. And she should do it well, right?"

However, the charming, easy-going Jason Smith also demonstrates how privilege forms a protective barrier against the realities faced by so many others in the world outside Barton. He cheerily describes his refusal to cut his hair as a form of civil disobedience, showing him adopting the language of political resistance associated with the civil rights and anti-war movements. Smith's father then appears in a helicopter to whisk him and his fellow students away for a ski trip. The helicopter is a symbol of how Smith can literally and figuratively rise above the realities that prompt genuine protest and risk.

Angus and Hunham occupy ambiguous positions within this privileged environment, with neither fully belonging to the culture of entitlement that surrounds them. While Angus is a beneficiary of this system that privileges wealth and whiteness, his precarious family circumstances don’t allow him to face the future with the same certainty and confidence as many of the other students. While many Barton students appear confident that their wealth and connections will protect them from failure, Angus is acutely aware of his vulnerability. His fear of military school and his admission that he is "falling apart" reveal someone who does not assume the world owes him success. Hunham's relationship with privilege is even more complex. Although he is not wealthy, he enjoys the status associated with teaching at an elite institution. Yet he remains an outsider within the very system he serves. His account of losing his academic career because of a plagiarism accusation involving a well-connected student highlight one of the film's central ideas: privilege is not distributed equally, even among the privileged.

The Holdovers distinguishes between privilege and entitlement, although many Barton students possess both. Characters such as Kountze expect accommodation simply because of who they are and where they attend school. Principal Woodrup similarly demonstrates how institutions often protect privilege, suggesting that Hunham should have passed a donor's son regardless of merit. In contrast, neither Hunham nor Angus displays this sense of entitlement. Both understand that consequences are real, and both live with a persistent fear of failure. They emerge as sympathetic precisely because they are privileged individuals who have been forced to recognise the limits of that privilege. The inclusion of Mary’s character further centres this examination of privilege. She has experienced the costs of social inequality directly through the death of her son, and her perspective exposes the limits of the Barton worldview. Her presence serves as a constant reminder of the human consequences that privilege can obscure, reinforcing The Holdovers' critique of privilege as a barrier to empathy and genuine understanding.

A note about setting and privilege; Hunham’s rooms and the students’ bedrooms look very basic, especially in relation to the grandeur of Principal Woodrup’s office and the public-facing spaces at the school.

This relates in part to the authentic 1970s décor, but it also visually downplays the privilege enjoyed by Angus and Hunham, arguably making it somewhat easier to empathise with both characters.

The establishment is the social elite and the institutions that sustain their power. Its defining characteristic is not wealth alone, but the influence and connections that wealth affords. Accordingly, Barton Academy is more than just a school; it is an institution that prepares young men for positions of influence and power. By connecting students from wealthy and well-connected families to elite networks and opportunities, Barton helps reproduce and solidify existing social hierarchies. The Holdovers suggests that access to such institutions are as important to future success as ability or hard work. This is evident when Hunham reveals that his academic career was derailed after he was accused of plagiarism by a student whose family possessed significant influence. Similarly, Principal Woodrup pressures Hunham to pass the son of a wealthy donor, demonstrating how institutions often prioritise status and connections over merit or ability.

Hunham's education took him as far as Harvard, the oldest university in the United States and one of the most prestigious universities in the world. However, he never graduated. According to his account, the plagiarism scandal that derailed his future was shaped by the influence of his roommate’s well-connected family, but it was his decision to hit his cheating roommate with a car that ultimately sealed his fate. Played for comedy, this revelation points to Hunham being his own worst enemy, but it also reveals the younger Hunham's frustration and isolation when confronted by the power and influence wielded by wealth and social status within the educational establishment epitomised by Harvard.

Although his downfall is partly self-inflicted, Hunham's story suggests that merit alone cannot guarantee success when opportunities and outcomes are shaped by wealth, status, and institutional influence. Seen in this light, his concerns about entitlment winning the war against 'integrity' can be viewed as personal, as well as ethical and professional.

Hunham: “...and we cannot sacrifice our integrity on the altar of their entitlement…”

With his educational aspirations ending in disappointment and his return to Barton as a teacher symbolising failure, Hunham's teaching is imbued with bitterness towards the establishment that privileges his students. He treats his punishing academic standards and disdain for his pupils as a form of resistance to that establishment: both the version embodied by Barton and the broader social order shaped and manipulated by wealthy and influential individuals. These are the kinds of people whose children, as Hunham bitterly observes, would never find themselves in Vietnam.

The reality of the Vietnam War serves as a powerful reminder of the consequences of institutional privilege in The Holdovers. In this context, Curtis provides the film's clearest example of the limits of meritocracy and the powerlessness of individuals in the face of class, racial, and economic inequality. Despite possessing the aptitude and ambition to attend college, financial barriers leave military service as his most viable pathway to higher education. Hunham's observation that the children of the wealthy would never find themselves in Vietnam is borne out by Curtis's predicament. While Barton students are protected by privilege and afforded pathways to elite universities, Curtis faces the prospect of military service precisely because those opportunities remain financially out of reach.

Viewers engage emotionally with the unfairness of Curtis's fate through the perspective of Mary, a mother who has invested her hopes for a better future in her son and made sacrifices to help him achieve his potential. As she watches the "little assholes" protected by an unjust social hierarchy, she is confronted with a society that values the futures of privileged boys more highly than her son's. Through Curtis and Mary, the film exposes the human cost of a system that rewards privilege while presenting itself as a meritocracy.