Film / The Holdovers

"I find the world to be a bitter and complicated place... you and I have that in common, I think."

Hunham: You just earned yourself a detention, sir! Get back here!
Angus: Being here with you's already one big fucking detention!
Hunham: Son of a bitch, that's another detention!

The Holdovers is a 2023 comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants), starring Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa.

It's December 1970, and Paul Hunham (Giamatti) is a curmudgeonly teacher at an elite boarding school called Barton Academy, where he's found himself in hot water for failing the son of an influential politician. As comeuppance, Hunham must spend his winter break supervising the various Barton students who have no place to go for the holidays — the titular "holdovers."

Although he starts break as irascible as ever, Hunham eventually forms a friendship with one of the holdovers, a troubled young man named Angus Tully (Sessa), as well as the school's head cook Mary Lamb (Randolph), who is grieving the loss of her son in The Vietnam War.

The Holdovers premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 31st, 2023 and was distributed theatrically by Focus Features, opening in limited release on October 27th before receiving a wider release on November 10th.

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The Holdovers contains examples of:

• The '70s: The film is set right at the start of this decade, and every aspect of it, from the old-fashioned film stock to the close attention to detail in the production design, reflects that fact.
• '70s Hair: On ample display, especially among the older students at Barton.
• Abusive Parents: Hunham refers a few times to a dark history with his father, who he says he avoided becoming "no matter how much he tried to beat that idea into me".
• Actor Allusion: Just as in his previous collaboration with Alexander Payne, Paul Giamatti plays a teacher who enjoys looking at porn. The same Oscar-like statuette can also be seen in his room in both films.
• The Alcoholic: Hunham is constantly day-drinking while he oversees the holdovers. One of the key revelations about his past even occurs in a liquor store while he's buying his favorite alcohol. In the end, he steals the dean's expensive brandy and takes a swig from it as he prepares to hit the road, though he dutifully spits it out before driving away, suggesting that he might start to rein back his drinking in this next chapter of his life.
• All Love Is Unrequited:
  • Hunham has a crush on the principal's secretary, though he tries to pretend he doesn't. But when he considers finally making a move at the Christmas party she invited him to, he sees her kissing a man who just arrived to the party, presumably her boyfriend.
  • Danny, the school's janitor, clearly has a thing for Mary, but she isn't super receptive to his advances, no doubt partially due to her continuing grief over her son's death. She never rebuffs him, though, suggesting that something might happen between the two of them when she's ready.
• And Starring: Of the "introducing" variety for Dominic Sessa.
• Argentina Is Nazi-Land: After Hunham announces that he plans to give all of the holdovers detention since none of them are willing to confess who started the fight between Angus and Kountze, Angus snarks, "And I thought all the Nazis were hiding in Argentina."
• Bait-and-Switch: Angus's father is implied to be dead when his mother says she knows he "misses" him, and Angus later tells Hunham that his father is indeed dead. So when he says he wants to "visit" his father, Hunham assumes he means a trip to a cemetery. But then it's revealed that his father is actually in an asylum. When Angus visits him, the first thing he says is how much he misses him.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Headmaster Dr. Woodrup begs Hunham to let up and "be a human being" for the kids stuck at the school for Christmas. Without any irony, it's the exact thing Woodrup fires Hunham for after Angus' trip to the his father's facility.
• Big Man on Campus: Jason Smith, one of the students initially stuck at Barton for the Christmas break, is the school's quarterback, and we get the sense that his family are rich even by Barton standards. He's generally a pretty nice guy, though. He tries to mediate between Angus and Kountze, and when his dad comes to pick him up to go skiing, he manages to convince him and the school to let all the other holdover kids come along, with Angus only not being able to go due to his mom being unreachable by phone. He is rather apologetic to Angus before leaving as well.
• Bittersweet Ending: Hunham takes the fall for the trip to visit Angus' father, and it costs him his job, but by doing so he ensures Angus isn't expelled and that he won't have to go to military school. Mary also makes peace with her son's death, and for his part, Hunham ventures off to a life outside of Barton for the first time.
• Blank Book: When Hunham is packing up after having been let go, Mary shows up to his door. She gifts him a book, just like Paul did earlier in the movie. But when Paul flips through it, confused to see that all the pages are blank, Mary explains that it’s for him to write his monograph in.
• Blatant Lies: The teacher originally slated to watch the holdovers during Christmas break managed to get out of the assignment by claiming that his his mother was very sick with lupus. In later conversations, he would either say that he didn't recall if his mother was even sick or act like he didn't know what people were talking about.
• Bourgeois Bohemian: Jason's CEO dad tells him to cut his hair, but he refuses, citing "civil disobedience". By the end of the movie, he has cut his hair after all, suggesting that it was never really that important to him.
• Brick Joke:
  • The expensive brandy given to Dr. Woodrup that Hunham covets at the start of the film is stolen by Hunham as he leaves, and he makes sure to spit a mouthful of it derisively in the direction of the school.
  • Jason Smith states that he's in a battle of wills with his father over his long hair, the reason he was initially stuck at school over the break. He apparently correctly guessed that his father would crack first (which happens when his father shows up in a chopper to take him away), but once everyone returns to school, he's seen with very short hair. Apparently his father won in the end.
  • During Christmas, Hunham gifts both Angus and Mary copies of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, leading Mary to joke that he gifts them to everyone. When he's packing up his office at the end, one shot shows a box entirely dedicated to copies of Meditations.
  • At one point, Angus ribs Hunham about his lazy eye, saying that he's never been sure which eye he's supposed to look into while talking to him. After he takes the heat for Angus at the cost of his job in the end, once he emerges from Dr. Woodrup's office, he simply points to an eye and tells Angus, "It’s this one. This is the one you should look at."
• Brutal Honesty: Both Hunham and Angus engage in this, but Angus can be particularly scathing.
  Angus: You smell.
• The Bully: Teddy Kountze fulfills this role, picking on the two younger holdovers and going after Angus once he's called on it.
• By "No", I Mean "Yes": When Angus and Crane's niece Elise are spending time together at the Christmas party, Elise catches his eyes wandering and asks if he's trying to look down her shirt. Angus says no...then after a brief pause says yes.
• Chekhov's Gun: The snow globe Angus finds at the Crane Christmas party. He takes it with him and gives it to his father when visiting him at the mental hospital, which ends up getting him in trouble.
• Commonality Connection: Hunham slowly realizes over the film the similarities Angus has with him, such as realizing that the boy is taking the exact same medication for depression that he is.
• Condescending Compassion: Mary rolls her eyes at the rote prayers given for her deceased son, clearly unimpressed.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment:
  • When Hunham passes back his class's finals, with Angus being the only one who got higher than a C, Kountze begs him for leniency, and he reluctantly agrees to give a makeup exam after the break. He then starts to dive into new material, to which Angus protests that doing so on the last day before break is absurd. Hunham acquiesces and dismisses class early... but not before also getting rid of the makeup exam, forcing the original grades to stand, and directly blaming Angus for it.
  • When Hunham arrives on the scene of a fight between Angus and Kountze, he asks who started it, and none of the holdovers respond. He then says that he'll have to "do it like the Roman legions", and announces that not only will everyone get detention for every minute that nobody confesses, but their first detention will be spent cleaning the library top to bottom, with no shortage of nauseating details given on the amount of filth they'll be responsible for. Immediately afterwards, one of the younger holdovers is sufficiently terrified into saying that it was Kountze, to which Hunham grins and tells him, "Bravo."
• Country Matters: "Kountze" is a Getting Crap Past the Radar version, and the character certainly is one.
• Credits Gag: In addition to the Retreaux style of the Logo Joke, the opening credits also claim the movie was copyrighted in 1971 (with a company name omitted to highlight the gag part of it), using the Roman numeral style that was standard in the later parts of the 20th century. The real copyright date of 2023 appears in the closing credits.
• Dead Guy Junior: Mary's pregnant sister decides that, if her child is a boy, his middle name will be Curtis, after his cousin who died in Vietnam.
• Deadpan Snarker: Paul Hunham has a dry wit that gets him in trouble on a few occasions. It's to be expected given who he's played by. Angus matches him step for step.
• Decoy Protagonist: The film's first act and title make it seem as though it will be about all of the holdovers learning to bond with each other and Hunham during the break. Then all the holdovers but Angus leave for a skiing trip, revealing that the scope will actually be focused on him.
• Denied Food as Punishment: After Hunham successfully pressures one of the younger holdovers into ratting out Kountze for starting the fight he gets into with Angus, we see the group having a meal at the table, with Kountze notably separated at the end of the table without a plate.
• Disappeared Dad: Angus' birth father is out of the picture. At first, Angus tells Hunham his father's dead; later, it's revealed that he's living in a mental hospital after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and early-onset dementia.
• Domestic Abuse: Angus confesses to Hunham that his father had become "physical" as his mental state deteriorated, which was what finally pushed his mother to have him institutionalized. He doesn't say whether the abuse was directed at him, his mother, or both.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Mary turns to the bottle to cope with her grief after losing her son in Vietnam. By the end of the movie, she's on the mend, only ordering tea at a restaurant.
• Embarrassing Damp Sheets: Ye-Joon Park, one of the younger holdovers, has a nightmare, starts crying, and wets his bed. His crying awakens Angus, who assesses the situation, says that the other kids would "crucify" him if they found out, and promises to help him with his sheets in the morning. A Pet the Dog moment for Angus.
• Epic Fail: Many of Hunham's attempts to connect to other people at a human level turn out this way. One that really stands out is his effort to strike up a conversation with a Mall Santa at a bowling alley by giving him a lecture about the historical Saint Nicholas. Hunham tells the mall Santa that he should wear sandals and a light robe to be consistent with St. Nicholas' Byzantine background. Of course, the mall Santa and his friend just glare at Hunham, probably thinking that he's either drunk or insane. Hunham looks extremely pleased with himself.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Hunham is introduced muttering to himself about how stupid his students are. When Lydia knocks on his door, he rudely tries to shoo her away, and when she gifts him Christmas cookies, he just smiles awkwardly and shuts the door, establishing him as a Stern Teacher who has No Social Skills but is also capable of at least trying to be nice and genuinely appreciating acts of kindness, even if he struggles to show it.
  • Angus is introduced quarreling with other students and shooting some genuinely witty barbs at them, getting the highest grade in his ancient civilizations class, and contradicting his teacher, establishing him as a bright but haughty and prickly kid.
• Ethnic Menial Labor: Danny the janitor, Mary the kitchen manager, and many of the kitchen staff are all black. All of the professors, and nearly all of the students, are white.
• Family Portrait of Characterization: Angus keeps an old family photo showing a much-younger self and both of his parents, implied to be from a time before his father's mental state deteriorated. He angrily throws it away when Kountze defaces it.
• Fired Teacher: Hunham gets fired at the end for Taking the Heat for Angus' actions. We see him walk toward his car carrying a Cardboard Box of Unemployment.
• Foreshadowing:
  • After an incident where Angus dislocates his arm, he comes up with a spontaneous lie so that Hunham doesn't get in trouble, pretending that Hunham is his father and they rarely get time together. Hunham returns the favor at the end of the movie, when he lies to clear Angus of responsibility for visiting his real father and make sure he doesn't get expelled.
  • During the montage of failing test grades early on, Angus is shown to have the highest grade among his classmates at a B+, setting up his ability to match wits with Hunham throughout.
  • Earlier in the film, Jason Smith mentions that his dad is on a skiing vacation but won't let him come because he hasn't cut his hair. The dad shows up in a helicopter a few scenes later with a change of heart, and whisks away every holdover but Angus. As a Brick Joke at the end of the movie, we see that Jason has cut his hair after all.
• Freudian Excuse: It's implied that the reason Hunham is such a hardass teacher is lingering resentment towards his old roommate from Harvard, who plagiarized his work and avoided the consequences because his family were wealthy donors. As a result, he's incredibly strict with his students, especially the privileged ones who try to coast by on prestige alone, and is quick to assume that everyone under his tutelage is the same, only growing out of it after spending time with Angus. Early in the film, Mary points out to him that even with their privilege and wealth, many of his students still have it pretty bad at home.
• Freudian Trio: The three remaining holdovers. At first, it appears that Angus is the id, Mary is the ego (as she mediates between Hunham and Angus), and Hunham is the superego, so distracted by books that he doesn't indulge himself. However, the longer they're there, Hunham lets out his more Angus-like side and becomes the ego to Angus's id and Mary's superego.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Hunham dramatically points down the hallway at Angus as he delivers the last line of the page quote.
• Gratuitous Latin: Hunham drops plenty of it, as you might expect from an ancient civilizations teacher.
• Hated by All: Hunham isn't quite hated by all — he's friendly, or at least polite, with Mary and Miss Crane at the start of the movie — but as far as the students and faculty of Barton are concerned, he's this. While he likes to give off the impression of not caring, it's implied being seen in this manner bothers him a lot more than he lets on, responding to Angus telling him about his status not with a sarcastic line but a look of sadness.
• Hate Sink: Kountz is entitled, arrogant, intentionally obnoxious, racist, and unlike the other flawed characters, he never shows the slightest decency towards another individual and has absolutely no redeeming qualities. He is, in short, everything that Hunham assumes all his students are.
• Held Gaze: Once Angus spends some time with Crane's niece Elise at the Christmas party, a sign that there's some chemistry between them is the amount of time they spend looking into each other's eyes. When Elise then kisses Angus, he continues to stare at her as if out of shock or simply not knowing what to do next, which makes her giggle.
• Hollywood Atheist: Downplayed. Hunham mentions that he was "praying to the God I don’t even believe in" that Angus' parents would pick up when he contacted them, and notes that Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is "like The Bible, The Qur'an, and the Bhagavad Gita all rolled up into one" but with "not one mention of God", which he considers its "best part". We're never told that his caustic personality and his stance on religion are connected, and the latter seems to read more as an extension of the former.
• Hypocritical Humor: As Hunham loftily trumpets, "Without sufficient exercise, the body devours itself," the camera lingers on him watching the kids run and idly smoking. See Ironic Echo, below.
• Ironic Echo:
  • Hunham orders the holdovers to run laps in the snow with the line "Without sufficient exercise, the body devours itself!" When he later chases Angus around the school, he visibly struggles to keep up with the young boy, who sees this and mocks him by throwing the line back at him.
  • Angus is quick to repeat the "Barton men don't lie" claim made by Hunham after watching him lie through his teeth to an old college friend.
  • Hunham eventually gets in on it, repeating Angus's line that everyone hates him to give him a little taste of his own medicine and to show what a thankless job it is to teach someone.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Hunham got kicked out of Harvard, and all of the Barton boys plan on going to an Ivy League school. Justified, since Barton is a prestigious and expensive boarding school full of adolescents from privileged backgrounds; Curtis, who was black and not from money, yearned to go to Swarthmore but never made it there.
  Hunham: Barton boys don’t go to Vietnam. They go to Yale or Dartmouth or Cornell, whether they deserve to or not.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Angus comes across as a jerk, but when one of the younger boys wets his sheets during the night, he is quick to comfort him and offer help.
  • Mr. Hunham as well. He's grumpy, sarcastic, a tough grader, and hated by pretty much the entire student body, but he also gives a fair grade when he realizes someone's putting in the effort, cares deeply about academic and professional integrity, and genuinely cares for both Mary and Lydia, who he understands have their own issues to grapple with and softens up towards Angus after seeing that he's not an entitled rich kid like Kountze but a well-meaning young man dealing with some serious issues and in need of help and guidance. Even before Character Development kicks in, we can still see those flashes of kindness he's hiding.
• Kick the Dog: After Ollerman gets Kountze in trouble by letting Hunham know that he started his fight with Angus, Kountze steals a glove from the boy's hand and throws it into the icy river in retaliation. Angus theorizes that he deliberately stole just one glove to be extra cruel.
  Angus: Twisted fucker orphaned that glove on purpose. Left you with one so the loss would sting that much more.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Cruel bully Kountze may get to escape the school for Christmas to go skiing, but cathartically, he returns hideously sunburned.
• Logo Joke: As neither Focus Features nor Miramax existed during the film's '70s setting, both get an original era-appropriate redesign, even following an old MPAA rating card. The UK edition also displays the old BBFC ratings card.
• Lovable Jock: Jason Smith is the school's popular star quarterback and seems rich and privileged even by Barton standards, but also proves to be a pretty nice guy, breaking up a fight between Kountze and Angus, and convincing his father to take the other students who have nowhere to go over the holidays on a skiing vacation with his family.
• Meaningful Name: Mary Lamb is shown throughout the movie to be grieving the loss of her son's life in Vietnam. In other words, "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Both her first and last name are also very Biblically grounded, as befits the most religious character in the movie.
• Military School: A looming threat in Angus's life; one such school named Fort Union is where he will be sent if he gets kicked out of another prep school. It's particularly dire due to the danger of the Vietnam War, where Curtis Lamb died. He comes close at the end, but is spared by Hunham's selflessness.
• Misery Builds Character: The line is quoted by Hunham who thinks that toughening the boys up will suit them well later in life. Mary calls him out on being too in love with this approach to teaching, that he has no idea what is going on in their lives and doesn't care to know when to take a softer approach.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Elise catches Angus trying to look down her shirt while they're fingerpainting. Ironically, by the time of that scene, he'd recently heard the line in another context, when a wounded vet in a bar saw him staring at his hook.
• My New Gift Is Lame: Mary and Angus are both unimpressed by Hunham's gift of Meditations. We later see that Hunham has a whole box full of them, apparently his stock for many future gifts.
• My Parents Are Dead: At the Christmas Eve party, Hunham angrily tells Angus that he wished his father would have arrived in a helicopter, submarine or flying saucer just to relieve him of his caretaker duty. Angus replies that his father is dead, which shuts Hunham up. Subverted when this turns out to not be literally true; Angus's father is suffering from schizophrenia and early-onset dementia. He barely recognizes Angus when he comes to visit him, the man that he used to be all but gone.
• Nice to the Waiter: One of the signs that Hunham isn't such a bad guy at the start of the film is the fact that he treats Mary, the campus cook, with nothing but respect, offering her a seat at the table and exploding at Kountze when he insults her.
• No Social Skills: Hunham is brusque and has a habit of awkwardly dropping classical allusions and quotations that bore or confuse the people he's talking to into casual conversations.
• "Not So Different" Remark: During a heart-to-heart between Hunham and Angus, Hunham states that he finds the world to be "a bitter and complicated place", and then says, "You and I have that in common, I think."
• Nurture over Nature: During his conversation with Angus at the restaurant, Hunham tells Angus that they're their own men, and neither of them are fated to turn out the way their fathers did.
• Off to Boarding School: While many characters are at Barton because of family distance (Ye-Joon's family are in Korea and want him to have an "American" experience, Ollerman's parents are LDS missionaries), it's clear that some families just don't want to deal with their kids. Angus, whose mother and stepfather won't even answer the phone, are heavily implied to be in the latter category. Plus, if Barton doesn't do the job, they're willing to send him to Military School.
• Old Shame: Hunham got falsely accused of plagiarism at Harvard, and was thrown out when he attempted revenge, destroying his academic career and forcing him to return to Barton to get a job.
• The Oner: It's subtle and not as flashy as a lot of examples of the trope, but the scene in the liquor store is all one 80-second take until it cuts to the cashier. Alexander Payne explains that he really wanted the whole scene in one shot and choreographed around the camera movements, so Giamatti and Sessa's ability to memorize lengthy stretches of dialogue was crucial, as the scene was about four pages long.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Mary's son Curtis died in Vietnam recently, and it haunts her so much that she isn't willing to leave Barton, as that's where she last was with him.
• Parental Hypocrisy: Hunham is not actually anyone's parent, but he acts as a caretaker for the holdovers and continuously holds them to standards he doesn't meet himself. And he gets called out for it.
  • He makes the boys run laps around the campus, claiming that the body devours itself without exercise. He oversees them smoking his pipe.
  • He proclaims "Barton men don't lie", but is later caught lying himself.
• Pet the Dog: Angus comforts Ye-Joon after his nightmare and helps him hide his urine-stained sheets, even though he had been snarky and abrasive up until this point, proving that he has good character deep down.
• Posthumous Character: Dr. Greene, a former Barton headmaster who was kind to Hunham, and for whom he has great respect. He represents the time when Barton was actually a place of principle and integrity, rather than the diploma factory for rich kids that it's becoming.
• Precious Photo: Angus is deeply upset when Teddy Kountze steals and defaces his family photo.
• Put on a Bus:
  • The four other boys staying at the school over break disappear from the story entirely after they leave with Jason's father.
  • Mary is at her sister's house for the majority of the final act in Boston.
• Quotes Fit for a Trailer: Examples from several of the film's TV spots (1, 2).
  • One spot precedes the narrator's statement that several publications are all talking about the film with Hunham's line "I have a surprise!" and follows it with Angus' line "Okay, let's hear," after which the spot displays several glowing blurbs.
  • Another spot follows a positive blurb with this exchange:
    Hunham: That was just lovely.
    Mary: Is that an actual compliment?
• Retraux: It's subtle, but the film is shot in a rather old-fashioned way to recall the movies of the early '70s, including retro credits and production cards, juddered titles, camera zooms instead of dolly shots, artificial grain and even film scratches. The trailer even has a voiceover!
• The Reveal: Angus' father isn't dead, like we're made to believe for most of the movie. Rather, he's institutionalized with severe mental illness.
• The Runaway: Of a fashion; Hunham left home at fifteen to escape his father, but it was to take a scholarship at Barton and go off to college from there.
• Sadist Teacher: Hunham definitely takes joy in intimidating and tormenting the kids under his tutelage in the belief that doing so will make them better and out of his belief that they are spoiled rich kids who will go on to prestigious universities, whether they deserve to or not. It takes the events of the film for him to finally ease up and see them as kids struggling with their own problems that he is only making worse and to finally ease up.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Part of the reason Hunham has difficulty relating to and connecting with other people is his use of obscure vocabulary and historical references in everyday conversation. For example, he attempts to defuse a conflict between Angus and a Vietnam vet, only for the veteran and his buddy to not understand that Hunham was offering to buy them a beer because of his stilted manner of speech.
• Snow Globe of Innocence: Angus is taken by a snow globe he sees at the Crane Christmas party, and the sound fades out as its music plays. His fascination with it is a symbol of his yearning for togetherness over the holidays.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Hunham has the extensive, sophisticated vocabulary that you'd expect from a professor at an elite boarding school who prides himself on his knowledge, and even he's not above mixing his verbiage with crass or colorful language if need be. Take, for instance, his final message to Dr. Woodrup.
  Hunham: Hardy, I have known you since you were a boy, so I think I have the requisite experience and insight to aver that you are and always have been penis cancer in human form.
• Standard Snippet: Ride of the Valkyries: Hunham whistles this as he hands out dismal end-of-semester grades to his class.
• Stern Teacher: Hunham is undeniably strict, and he does take a certain pleasure in making his (mostly spoiled rich kid) students squirm, but he operates by the honor code and gives good grades when they're warranted. He eases up a lot over the events of the film.
• Taking the Heat: When Angus is facing expulsion over meeting with his mentally ill father and giving him a snow globe, which ended up causing his dad to have a mental breakdown, Hunham lies by saying that not only did Angus not sneak off under Hunham's watch to see his dad (which he definitely attempted to), but that Hunham outright encouraged him to do it. Hunham loses his job, but Angus is allowed to stay at Barton.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Hunham starts off as a pompous hardass who takes pleasure in making his students' lives hell but he eases up over the holidays and his time with Angus and growing to like the kid and learning about his circumstances.
• Tragic Dropout:
  • When they run into one of his former classmates and Hunham lies about doing better than he is, he finally confesses to Angus the truth: he was unjustly accused of plagiarism at Harvard by his roommate, who had actually stolen from him. It led to Hunham "accidentally" hitting the guy with his car and being expelled, and he never got to finish college. The only person who knew was Dr. Greene, who gave Hunham a teaching assistant job out of pity that turned into a professorship he never actually earned.
  • Curtis, Mary's son, is an even more tragic character. Despite having excellent grades from Barton and a scholarship, he wasn't able to afford college. As a result, he didn't get to defer enlistment due to being at college, and has been killed in The Vietnam War that same year. Mary notes, brokenhearted, that before Curtis left for duty he told her he'd at least be able to afford college on the GI bill once he returned.
• Tragic Keepsake: The box that Mary lovingly keeps in her closet and implores Angus to treat carefully is filled with sentimental toys, baby clothes, and other children's items that had belonged to her deceased son. She gives them away to her pregnant sister, which helps her come to terms with Curtis's death.
• Trailers Always Spoil: One of the TV spots for the film spoiled the reveal that Angus's father is dead, though it doesn't reveal that that was a lie.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Angus is caught because he gave his father a snowglobe, proving that he'd made an unauthorized visit to the mental hospital he was staying at.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Even while drunk, Mary gives one to Hunham following a confrontation with Angus after Miss Crane's Christmas party.
  Mary: You don't tell a boy who's been left behind on Christmas that you're aching to get rid of him, that he's not wanted. What the fuck is wrong with you?
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: After Angus' visit to his father goes poorly, with his father barely able to recognize him in the throes of his mental illness, he has a heart-to-heart with Hunham at a restaurant. He recounts that his father's condition ultimately led him to become abusive, admits that he finds himself so flawed that his mother may have been right to send him off to boarding school, states that he'll likely be kicked out of Barton by his own doing, and voices his fear that what happened to his father will happen to him. Hunham immediately shoots down the ideas that Angus' mother would do away with her own son and that he's following in his father's footsteps. To the latter point, he assures Angus that he is not his father; he brings up his own checkered history with his father, makes a point that he was able to become his own person in spite of it, and tells Angus that he is capable of doing the same.
• Your Mom: Early on, a fellow pupil compares Angus' swimsuit to women's underwear. Angus retorts with this being the panties of the other guy's mom.

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