The Year’s Best Movie About Faith Was a Tween Drama Set in the ’70s

In Slate’s annual Movie Club, film critic Dana Stevens emails with fellow critics—for 2023, Bilge Ebiri, Esther Zuckerman, and Mark Harris—about the year in cinema. Read the first entry here.

Hello, you snarling Visigoths,

When I first saw The Holdovers back at the Toronto International Film Festival in a press screening so packed that people were kicked out because they were standing in the aisles, all I could think after sobbing my way through Payne’s film was that it would be a perfect movie to watch with my family at Christmastime. I don’t run a movie studio, but I did find it baffling that The Holdovers started its limited run in mid-October and has now all but disappeared from cinemas. I’m sure there was probably some sort of thought behind that strategy, and yet I don’t really understand why you wouldn’t play up the holiday season aspect of this movie for audiences.

Every Christmas Eve growing up, my family and I would do what good Jews do and go to the movies. My parents had a pretty lax idea of what was appropriate for a child to watch, so we would mostly just see whatever they thought was interesting. I remember, for instance, that when I was 12 we saw Todd Haynes’ magnificent Far From Heaven, a riff on Douglas Sirk films from the 1950s about a housewife whose life is turned upside down when she discovers her husband is gay. Now, I wouldn’t call Far From Heaven a “cozy” movie, but I have cozy feelings remembering watching it on the holiday all those years ago. That’s in part because I loved that family tradition so much, and in part because of the nostalgic milieu that Haynes evoked.

Payne does a similar thing in The Holdovers, which would have been an ideal selection for one of those movie nights. While Far From Heaven feels like a lost film from the 1950s, The Holdovers similarly feels like a lost film from the 1970s. I think that’s why the word “cozy” has gotten thrown around so much when discussing it, Bilge. It’s not because it’s treacly, it’s because it’s the kind of thing we just don’t get frequently anymore from cinema: a character-based drama about normal people where the stakes are really just about how they will choose to live their lives.

It’s a movie that feels somehow enormous and tiny at the same time, if that makes sense. Huge because of the way its emotions and the people in it burrow into your soul, but small in that their problems seem like the kind that anyone could have. Each time I’ve watched it I’ve just felt overwhelmed by just the humanity of the story I witnessed. I felt the same way about another ’70s-set period piece that landed on both my and Dana’s Top 10: Kelly Fremon Craig’s wonderful adaptation of Judy Blume’s seminal young-adult novel Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Even before seeing Margaret I had high hopes for it. Craig’s previous feature, 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen, is one of the best teen flicks in recent memory, one of the rare works about young people that actually seems to understand how confusing it is to be that age. Edge of Seventeen allows its heroine Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) be a real jerk, never sanding down her rougher edges. You root for her, but you’re also aware that she’s being wrongheaded and bratty. You can see all your mistakes in Nadine even as you want her to succeed. Craig’s deft sense of the messiness of youth boded well for her take on Blume’s oeuvre, which has always refused to let kids be simple.

If you ask someone with only a passing familiarity with Blume’s book about Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret the first thing they’ll probably say is, “Isn’t that the one about the periods?” But menstruation is just one part of Blume’s puberty classic. The story is less about Margaret (played by Abby Ryder Fortson) wanting to get her period and grow boobs—though that is a part of it—than about her trying to figure out what to believe in.

Margaret’s Jewish dad, Herb (Benny Safdie, having a great year), and Christian mom, Barbara (Rachel McAdams, perfect), haven’t imposed any sort of religion on her. Because of their own scars—Barbara was disowned by her parents for marrying a Jew—they think it’s best if Margaret chooses for herself. But it can be challenging for a sixth-grader to find her own version of spirituality! The way Craig, channeling Blume, offers no easy answers makes her film one of the canniest about faith in recent memory. It recognizes the importance of having something to believe in, but acknowledges how arbitrary that choice can be.

Craig made a couple of brilliant decisions in her adaptation. While I don’t know for sure, I bet some executive urged her to update Margaret for 2023, but she kept it rooted in the 1970s. Craig doesn’t as fully commit to the bit as Payne, with his retro title cards, but there’s a similar warmth that comes from keeping the story in the past. It doesn’t make it any less complicated, but it clarifies it—I’d never want to see Margaret scrolling Instagram or whatever. We have Bo Burnham’s great Eighth Grade for that.

And I’m so grateful that Craig expanded the character of Barbara, Margaret’s mom. Craig recognized that many of her viewers may have read Margaret as a child, but are now Barbara’s age, and so she created a parallel journey for her. Just as it’s difficult for Margaret to discover her place when her family moves to the suburbs, it is also challenging for Barbara, an artist who attempts to join the Jersey moms in their PTA activities. In Rachel McAdams, one of our most underrated and subtle performers, Craig found an ideal conduit for this character’s compassion and emotional uncertainty.

Bilge, you mentioned your fear that The Holdovers is getting forgotten in the awards shuffle. But one place where the movie feels like it’s a lock is in Best Supporting Actress, where Da’Vine Joy Randolph looks to get deservedly recognized. I’ll be thrilled if that does happen. But I would also love it if McAdams could make her way into the conversation. Alas, that feels, depressingly, like a long shot. But maybe that just goes to show what an incredible year it is for women on screen. What say you, Mark?

Are you there Movie Club? It’s me,

Esther

Read the next Movie Club post: May December Is a Masterpiece No One Knows How to Talk About