MY MOVIE SHELF: The Holiday

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 237 Days to go: 242

Movie #140: The Holiday

After the first two high-profile directing jobs of Nancy Meyers’s career (What Women Want and Something’s Gotta Give), I would’ve told you — loudly and vehemently — that I was not a Nancy Meyers person. She’d written a thousand things I loved, so her writing wasn’t the problem. Her directing, however, drove me crazy. At least that’s what I assumed. Nowadays, though, I think I was wrong. I think those two particular movies just happen to be awful and that Nancy Meyers herself is an intriguing and prolific talent. It was The Holiday that started me changing my mind.

What Women Want and Something’s Gotta Give, while huge commercial hits, are terrible movies. Terrible. I will defend this stance forever. I will die on this hill. First of all, What Women Want is little more than a mockery of women. It demeans women and reduces women to a few silly quirks Mel Gibson can look ridiculous emulating or smirkingly exploit, and it in no way seems to make any kind of authentic or sincere statement about women, how they think, or what they want. It’s just awful. Something’s Gotta Give is better, softer and more forgiving and understanding to women, but it still bases itself entirely on the idea that gross, sexist Jack Nicholson is at all worthy of Diane Keaton’s love. Not only that, but it features an extended crying jag from Keaton that is clearly supposed to be funny but instead plays like women are ridiculous hysterical creatures. It’s a jokey cry; it’s an exaggerated, wailing cry. It’s awful as well.

The Holiday also features an over-the-top crying jag by Iris (Kate Winslet), but it offsets it with a woman named Amanda (Cameron Diaz) who overthinks everything and never cries. In this way, it creates two very specific women who react at times similarly and at times vastly different from one another with regard to failed romances. And by portraying these women as existing on a spectrum of emotions and tendencies, it instantly prevents them being seen as caricatures. Not only that, but it gives these women interesting and compatible men to fall in love with: Graham (Jude Law) and Miles (Jack Black).

The movie begins with Iris and Amanda both failing at a romantic relationship. Iris has been constantly strung along and toyed with by emotionally manipulative bad boy Jasper (Rufus Sewell) and Amanda has been blamed for her boyfriend Ethan’s (Ed Burns) cheating because of her highly rational, outwardly unemotional demeanor. When Amanda throws Ethan out and Iris learns of Jasper’s engagement moments after he was once again suggestively flirting with her and giving her hope, the two women are desperate to get away from their lives. Amanda finds Iris’s English cottage on a Home Swap website and they decide to switch houses — Amanda coming to Surrey and Iris going to L.A. — for two weeks surrounding the Christmas holiday.

Amanda almost immediately starts second guessing herself once she’s settled into the cottage, but changes her mind about giving up and going home when Iris’s brother Graham stumbles onto her doorway one night after meeting up with friends at the pub and drinking a tad too much. Suddenly Amanda finds herself in a situation where she can let go of thought and follow her emotions, and she and Graham have a lot of very sexy chemistry to urge things on.

Iris, meanwhile, meets Miles when he comes to Amanda’s house to pick something up for Ethan. They are cordially friendly, since Miles has a girlfriend, but when that falls apart, Iris is able to commiserate with him because she knows exactly how it feels to be discarded and to think you’re not worthy of being loved.

There are bumps in the road for both couples, but ultimately they find themselves happier than they’ve ever been. Amanda is able to find her heart, and Iris is able to find her gumption (thanks in no small part to a lovely B-plot about an old Hollywood writer played by Eli Wallach). Graham is able to find someone who doesn’t shrink away from how complicated his life can be, and Miles finds someone who is beautiful and easy to be with and who appreciates him fully. So it’s a movie not just about women who are unlucky in love suddenly finding it, it’s about men who struggle with love as well. Their stories are on equal footing. They mesh. It feels more like these couples coming together just fit rather than like a movie that panders to the idea of an emotionally stunted woman stumbling on a miraculous dream guy. It’s refreshing and lovely, truly.

I’m a big fan of Kate Winslet and Jude Law, so it was never a question I would find their performances more than capable, but Cameron Diaz and — especially — Jack Black can be wild cards. Thankfully, though Diaz’s arc has the gimmick of being occasionally narrated by Movie Trailer Guy thanks to Amanda’s job as a trailer producer (which, being a movie person, I thoroughly enjoy), the performance of Amanda is easy breezy. She’s neurotic, but doesn’t overplay her hand, and when placed in awkward situations with Graham, she handles them with aplomb. Even better, Jack Black is beautifully subdued here. Miles is a music composer, so Black gets to indulge a little bit when talking about movie scores, but other than that his performance of Miles is low-key and sincere. It’s delightfully understated work that really brings out his charm. It’s without a doubt my favorite performance of his. Ever.

The Holiday is a romantic comedy that really works for me in large part because it thwarts a lot of romantic comedy tropes. The romantic intendeds aren’t bickering opposites who come together at the end despite all logic, nor do they fall in love at first sight and instantly become a happy couple. These people are all honest, careful portrayals of characters who feel like they could be real, and the movie intentionally takes its time with them, building their relationships brick by brick, piece by piece. The closing moments feel earned and sustainable, and yet the movie still gives off the aura of happy, blissful fantasy that romantic comedies are made of. It’s a lovely film, and I hope Nancy Meyers has quite a few more like this in her.