Why The Holiday is great, but Hollywood would never make it today
Conn Carroll
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It’s Christmas time, which in my house means watching Christmas movies with the family on the nights when the children don’t have to be carted to and from this or that extracurricular activity.
Last night my wife suggested we all watch The Holiday, which has always been one of my favorites but also seems to be getting better with age. While the movie premiered less than 20 years ago, however, there is no way Hollywood would produce it again today. Here’s why (spoilers ahead).
DESANTIS VS NEWSOM IS THE DEBATE WE SHOULD BE HAVING
The movie begins with Iris (Kate Winslet) at an office Christmas party in London where we see her give a thoughtful gift to her columnist ex-boyfriend, Jasper, just minutes before a surprise announcement from Iris’s boss that Jasper has just become engaged to an entirely different young woman from elsewhere in the office.
We then switch to a gigantic Los Angeles mansion where Amanda (Cameron Diaz) is confronting her boyfriend, Ethan, about her suspicions of his infidelities with his 24-year-old receptionist. After much badgering, Ethan finally confesses, at which point Diaz throws him out of the house, telling him he can pick up his things later.
Amanda then decides she needs to get far away where she can be totally alone over the impending Christmas holiday, and after a few keystrokes and some unsubtle Google-embedded marketing, she finds a vacation rental ad for Iris’s rustic cottage in Surrey, England.
When Amanda then messages Iris to ask about the cottage’s availability, Iris tells her it is only available for “home exchange,” which apparently involves trading homes (and cars) for an agreed-upon period of time. Amanda loves the idea, and when Iris confirms she can begin her vacation tomorrow, the two women are suddenly on planes escaping their failed love lives.
This being a romantic comedy, both women swiftly meet new men at their Christmas vacation destinations. Iris meets Miles (Jack Black), who swings by Amanda’s house to pick up Ethan’s belongings, not knowing that Amanda has left. Miles has a girlfriend in his car at the time, but the two share a cute moment when the Santa Ana winds blow some dust in Iris’s eye, which Miles deftly spots and picks out of her eyelashes.
Meanwhile, Amanda is intruded on by Iris’s drunk brother, Graham (Jude Law), who knocks on her door at 1 a.m. to relieve himself on the way home from the local pub. Charmed by his classically handsome looks and quick wit, Amanda makes an uncharacteristically rash decision to sleep with Graham since she has already decided to cut her vacation short by scheduling a return flight the next day.
Not turned off by Amanda’s claim that other men have told her she is “not very good” at sex, Graham stays the night and informs her the next morning that “your ex-boyfriend is, in my opinion, extremely mistaken about you.” Graham then asks her to stay for her full vacation and tells her that if she changes her mind about leaving, she can find him in the pub that night. Amanda does change her mind, finds Graham in the pub, and spends another night with him (although this time we are told there was only sleeping since Amanda passed out from drinking).
Next we see Iris helping Amanda’s walker-bound, 90-year-old neighbor, Arthur (Eli Wallach), find his way back home after getting lost because all the new homes in the neighborhood threw off his sense of direction. Iris then discovers that Arthur is an Academy Award-winning writer who is due for an award from the Writers Guild of America, but he refuses to accept it since he does not want to be seen in public using his walker. Iris presses him to accept the invitation, promising to get him healthy with some rehab in Amanda’s pool.
Back in Surrey, Graham treats Amanda to a day in the English countryside, including lunch where Amanda confesses she has not cried since her parents’ divorce when she was 15. Amanda is also suspicious of cellphone calls Graham keeps getting from a “Sophie” and an “Olivia,” but it is soon revealed that these young ladies are not romantic rivals, but instead the 7- and 5-year-old daughters of Graham, who is, as he spells out for Amanda while the children are listening, a W-I-D-O-W-E-R.
Fast forwarding a bit, Amanda and Graham agree to keep seeing each other even though they don’t know how it will affect their careers, and Miles finally gets up the gumption to ask Iris out after he discovers his girlfriend cheating on him. The movie ends with a touching scene of all six of them (Amanda, Graham, Sophie, Olivia, Iris, and Miles) dancing in Graham’s home together as a family on New Year’s Eve.
The movie works for all kinds of reasons, including the engaging dialogue by director/writer Nancy Meyers and the endearing performances by Winslet, Diaz, Law, Black, and Wallach. But what particularly strikes me as I watch the movie again each year is the relatability of the character arcs for both Amanda and Iris.
Amanda is a highly successful workaholic who, at 35, has consistently prioritized her career over her physical and emotional needs. This has undoubtedly paid some dividends. She owns her own company and a beautiful house. But even Amanda would admit the reason she finds herself 5,000 miles from home alone, drunk, and rocking out to “Mr. Brightside” over Christmas is because deep down she is unhappy. There is a big something missing from her life.
Many American women feel the same way today. As Hanna Rosin argues in her book The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, many women believe their professional success is dependent on avoiding emotional commitment to a man.
“[Women] are more likely to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money,” than men, Rosin notes, before going on to argue, “What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom — the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career.”
“To put it crudely,” Rosin continues, “feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women — not men — who are perpetuating the culture.”
Now, the deadening of Amanda’s emotional self was less of a choice to put career over love and more the result of the trauma from seeing her parents break up. But as many divorces as there are these days, there are also plenty of Hanna Rosins out there telling women that the only way to succeed professionally is to sacrifice their emotional lives.
To be fair to Amanda’s ex-boyfriend (but not to excuse his cheating), she probably was “not very good at sex” since her 15-year-old self had long ago killed off her ability to emotionally connect with a romantic partner. Through a confluence of the pain of her breakup, the new surroundings of England, and Graham’s extraordinary patience and empathy, Amanda is able to revive her ability to be both emotionally vulnerable and fulfilled. And by the end of the movie, she is able to cry, and love, again.
Iris also goes through an eminently relatable character arc made more common by the hookup culture era. As monogamous norms have decreased in recent years, more desirable men have felt entitled to sleep with more women, and more women have felt like they should tolerate the trade-off.
“There used to be more assortative mating where a five would date a five,” author Susan Walsh recently told the Atlantic. “But now every woman who is a six and above wants the hottest guy on campus, and she can have him … for one night.”
That was Iris’s relationship with her ex-boyfriend until Arthur told her she needed to stop being “the best friend” and instead embrace being the leading lady. Once she had given up on the dream boat, Iris could see that Miles was a perfectly attractive alternative. Meyers was looking for this dynamic when she chose Black for the part. “I’m aware he’s not Clark Gable,” Meyers said of casting Black. “He’s not tall, dark, and handsome, but he’s adorable, he’s lovable. It’s my way of saying this is the right kind of guy, this is what most guys look like if they’re lucky.”
The Holiday did not have a great opening weekend when it premiered in 2006, but its popularity spread by word of mouth. It ended up grossing $205 million compared to just $85 million to produce. And it has only gotten more popular with time, to the point where Meyers has been asked to produce a sequel.
But Hollywood has changed a lot since 2006, and there is no way it could produce anything close to an equally lovable movie today.
For starters, the movie is white. Really really white. Not only are Winslet, Diaz, Law, Black, and Wallach all white, but the only time we see any minorities in the movie is when they are cleaning Amanda’s house, helping Arthur walk, or inspecting Amanda’s luggage.
Casting aside, the larger reason that The Holiday wouldn’t be made today is that after the “Great Awokening,” Hollywood decided heterosexual romantic love was a tool of the patriarchy.
Just six years after Amanda found Graham in Surrey, Princess Merida rejected all suitors in Disney’s Brave, as did Elsa a year later in Frozen. Now Disney has the next Snow White telling the media that “she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and the leader that her late father told her that she could be.”
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Since when did marrying a man preclude a woman from being a leader? Elizabeth Stanton, Marie Curie, Rosa Parks, Margaret Thatcher, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg all made huge contributions to their community all while also being married.
I’ve already gone too long, so I won’t go into all the research showing that marriage makes women happier, but there is a reason why romantic comedies did so well for so many years before the “Great Awokening.” Women and men need each other, and they like watching movies where couples are able to work it out. Hollywood should try the formula again sometime.