The Sun seems perpetually ready to set in and upon All of Us Strangers, an achingly personal new romance by Lean on Pete director Andrew Haigh. It’s befitting of a film that enjoys that very Shakespearean notion of a tale told entirely in the twilight hours. Certainly, there’s something implicitly theatrical about the premise, which dances, at times, on the peripheral edges of gimmickry. Such concerns are, however, offset by the astounding rawness of Haigh’s own emotional engagement with the narrative. This is no autobiographical feature – the film takes inspiration from the 1987 Taichi Yamada novel, Strangers – but it is no less enthused with the outpouring of a heart fully opened.
Never one to retire gracefully – and he’s got previous – Hayao Miyazaki’s latest swan song is a delectably well prickled endeavour, as rich in plot as visual flair. It’s a fantastical tale, for all the grounding themes of grief, loss and loneliness. An expansive world illuminates Miyazaki’s dazzling vistas, untethered perimeters and boundless imagination expanding across the screen. The film’s international title – The Boy and the Heron – is rather less prosaic than the Japanese original, which borrows from the 1937 novel How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino. It does, however, belie a stronger narrative drive here than in many of Miyazaki’s past, more cerebral, triumphs.
There’s a scene in The Holdovers in which Paul Giamatti’s cantankerous classics teacher, Mr. Hunham, hobbles out on Christmas morning to buy a tree. It’s a last minute plug to reintroduce festivity unto the emptied out halls of his workplace, the Barton Academy boarding school. Such proves a melancholy sight. A shonky spruce, sparsely decorated, and tilting tiredly to the right. And yet, it’s a gesture of hope too. An image of merriment. In many ways, this weary symbol of seasonal fancy embodies The Holdovers, which ambles into cinemas several weeks late for Christmas. The film reminds of joyful days past, even as a long, bleak winter sets in. Nailed is that happy-sad sweet spot all too often felt in the so-called most wonderful season of all.
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