It is a little out of place to put "The League of Staycations" in the ranks of the Oscars for Best Picture, or in various other awards.
It's not that the quality is not qualified, or that the actors can't act, but that it's very plain and dedicated, and it's almost impossible to see the fighting spirit - how many of its peers have a fighting spirit, exquisite and complicated, majestic and magnificent, and unique, in short, it is menacing, rushing to the box office, rushing to awards, and leaving a name in film history. So the "Wrong Thing About the School Retention Alliance" is that the perception is too light, and there are more people watching the war than participating in the war. 
In the eyes of many people, it is even a Christmas movie that is used to soothe the hearts of certain people at a specific time. Although this judgment has the qualifications to fight for its canonization, to a certain extent, it is naturally easy to weaken the expression that it can achieve. Of course, it is not for nothing that there are these references that good intentions outweigh bad intentions. The film is set during the Christmas and New Year holidays of 1970, when the unpopular teacher Paul is chosen to take care of the students who need to stay in school, and when the students are reduced to just one Angus, the two of them form a group with the head chef Mary who have to accompany each other but also invisibly develop a bond. Don't fight and don't know each other, enemies become friends, this kind of synopsis, every time it is thrown, it will give people a feeling of quite a routine, but this routine is different from documentaries like "** Master", as long as there are ups and downs, or even as long as there is a low tide and decline, and the vicissitudes of the era boosted by makeup and styling, it can at least impact the performance awards. 
*Master" its routine is biased towards the healing system, it is inspirational, inspiring, and ultimately must be soothed by the audience, especially in the cold period from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year, which needs to have such heat, but the heat that is so common to this is often not so easy to be served to a picky banquet. Words are not absolute, but once words are not absolute, they are prone to provocation. The year before last, the Oscar for Best Picture was awarded to "Hearing Girl", in addition to the care of the hearing-impaired and Apple's public relations bonus, it is still like a beautiful dessert after the main meal process, responsible for providing and can properly provide the final emotional value, but beyond "Drive My Car", "The Power of the Dog", "Dune" and other hard dishes are rated as the top brand, many people will still find it quite interesting. 
"Listening Girl" is only two years apart, and "Staying in School Alliance", as another dessert in the post-dessert stage, the kind with less sugar content has been placed in the middle of the table, which really makes people more interesting to explore. Although the probability of replicating the glory is not high, after all, the Oscars are a bit poor in winning attention with this kind of upset, but if you really want to be lucky again, it can only show that such a movie is loved and demanded in such an era, which is a phenomenon worth paying more attention to. In other words, its ability to be nominated has shown that in addition to public love and market preference, there is also a core that it does not show weakness. Part of the kernel is director Alexander Payne. After winning various screenwriting awards and nominating for various directorial awards with films such as "About Schmidt", "A Cup of Life" and "Descendants", this name alone is enough to redeem a large proportion of admission qualifications. 
Six years after the word-of-mouth failure of "Shrinking Life", he returned with this movie, which is a very shining signal. Fans are accustomed to expecting him to dismantle the world in his decadent life, and obtain those half-new truths that can always be lit at the right time. And we will find that Payne is extremely restrained on the surface, and there is a sharp edge surging in secret. Convergence is what I just said, this movie is so faint that it doesn't seem to be able to find a wit. Teachers and students suddenly found the key to mutual understanding between each other's dislike and dislike each other, to put it bluntly, similar to the model of all rival movies, the key task is to find that lever, and pry up the contrast accumulated in the previous vindictiveness at the emotional level, and even jump to the sublimation stage. 
In other words, it spends a lot of effort on finding inside, and sometimes it doesn't pay so much attention to the needs and feedback of the outside world. This is where the character settings are mentioned. In the movie, everyone is a dusty outcast. The principal of the teacher Paul is a former student of his own, and he looks down on him like everyone else, and thinks that he is a character who does not change the essence of soft persimmons even if he refutes it, so he throws such a as staying in school during the holidays on him. 
And the present is just a microcosm and reflection of his past life, he has no lack of disgusting obedience, just because he has resisted fiercely many times, but in the face of the hard unfair reality, talent, hard work and Ivy League student status are just eggs, he can't fight the bottom fate of being excluded, used and backstabbed, he has become a public sacrifice to the rules of reality, anyone can be despised, no wonder he gradually regards keeping distance from others as a paper-like shield. As for the student Angus, after his parents divorced, he had his own so-called personal hardships, and he became a ball that his father didn't love and his mother didn't love, kicking it around and falling into the even less warm corner of the school. He kept spitting out spikes and acid from his mouth, like a snake that was strong on the outside and dry on the middle, and when he saw whoever bites, he will lose three thousand to himself. Both men are prickly individuals, who do not believe in the outside world and outsiders, and deep down they yearn for someone to be trusted, and Angus longs more than Paul in this regard. 
Their comparison is the head chef Mary, a logistics staff who was simply ordered to stay and would not even ask, a black man, a woman, a poor man, her husband died, and her son chose to join the army in order to go to college, but he died before he could be discharged from the army. She is certainly the one in the worst situation and deserves the most care, but it is clear that in the United States in the seventies, as in this film, she is still a supporting character in the tragic drama. What's even more interesting is that it is often women who resolve the knot in the heart of a hard man. Mary's own magnanimity and overwhelming sorrow made her a beacon and a haven for the two white men, not to mention, at the bottom but also the most necessary material level, she also provided three meals a day. 
In this healing process, she became a companion to be relieved, such as she was taken to meet her sisters, to obtain the light and heat of her family and women, such as the final hardness of white men to show a kind of confrontation with fate in front of her, so as to form a new inner strength. There is, of course, warmth and arrogance here, but there is also unintended irony. Besides, when it comes to women, Lydia is naturally indispensable, and she has also lit the deep hearth of Paul, even if it is not a flash in the pan in the end, but it is enough to condense into a symbol of worldly simple happiness, and even almost become some kind of totem. The totem cannot be changed, it will only be fixed in the present, and it will no longer participate in various events to transform it, but in the process of comparing and adjusting itself, it can become Paul's yearning or even goal, and become another more lasting boosting elixir. 
Having experienced things and referring to past encounters, Paul and Angus, two characters who are damaged inside and out, are down-to-earth and focused towards reconciliation and understanding, slowly squeezing out the sweetness or even sweetness that the audience was waiting for at the beginning, forming an emotional resonance that constantly loops in and out of the play, that kind of small-scale self-experience. And we have to see from this that in many cases, the key to turning old enemies into hostility is that they are the same kind of people, or even the same person. Paul and Angus essentially embody a certain sense of historical depth, a past and a future for each other. At the end of the movie, the teacher sacrifices himself to save the students, although there is a kind of greatness and love, but there is also the joy of rewriting his past, resetting the future, and regaining freedom. 
It's a sense of going back in time, jumping into the future, and saving your present self in the face of a larger common enemy. The common enemy is the principal, the ill-intentioned and stubborn people around him, the closed school that is a metaphor for the times, or the symptoms of the times that continue to this day. In other words, "School Retention Alliance" is to solve the people in the play, but it is also, and it must be them and us outside the play, that is, this movie must be used to pour the foundation in the heart, the creator is relieved, and the audience who is deed, fateful, and willing to empathize can also get the relief of being deformed but more suitable.
The door of life lies in that symptom, and the reference of the film emerges with the despair and resentment of the outward act. Even turning to the 70s can be said to hide a lot of deliberate allegory, after all, not only the background, but also the retro of the film sound and painting also constitute the illusion of the old movie, and even the positioning of the Christmas movie is a bit drunkard. When it comes to this, it is naturally not good to talk about movies indifferent to fame and fortune, it is just too much like Paul, and it is easy to be caught, but when you touch it, it will be armed with those golden sentences that are remembered.
For example, I know that the Greeks would think that no matter how you try to avoid fate, every step will only lead there, but this is just a literary concept, and in real life, your past does not determine your destiny ......For example, each generation thinks that those painful, rebellious indulgences are created by themselves, but every human impulse and desire, from the dirty to the noble, is always around us. So before you hang high because you're bored or out of business, remember that if you want to really understand the present, understand yourself, you have to start with history. You see, history is not just the study of the past, but also the interpretation of the present. History as a topic, repeated and attacked many times.
Just as the male protagonist Paul is a history teacher, the movie borrows him, Payne borrows the movie, and Oscar can also borrow Payne to go through some historical experiences in the seventies and express some current views. Therefore, the alliance of "Staying in School Alliance" is actually not small, and the whole movie is not small, at least, it is not as small as its own cliché and neatness. It doesn't matter if it can win the Oscar.