THE HOLDOVERS reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Alexander Payne
Stars: Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa, Carrie Preston, Andrew Garman, Brady Hepner, Ian Dolley, Jim Kaplan, Michael Provost, Naheem Garcia, Stephen Thorne, Tate Donovan, Gillian Vigman, Darby Lily Lee-Stack.
Christmas 1970.
Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is an irascible and curmudgeonly teacher of ancient civilizations at Barton Academy who is old-fashioned in his approach to teaching and discipline and is generally despised by most of the students and other faculty. He seems to have spent most of his life at the same prestigious New England institution, first as a student and then a teacher.
Every year over the Christmas holiday Barton Academy closes down for a fortnight. However, those students who have, for some reason, nowhere to go over Christmas remain boarding at the school. This year the unwanted responsibility of looking after these holdovers falls on Paul’s shoulders. Also remaining is the school cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, from Only Murders In The Building, etc), who has suffered plenty of hardship in her life and is still grieving over the recent death of her twenty-year old son who was killed in action in Vietnam.
Initially there are a half dozen students at the start of the holiday. But when most of the kids are whisked away on a ski-trip by one of the wealthy parents, that number is soon whittled down to just one – the rebellious and troubled but bright Angus Tully (newcomer Dominic Sessa) whose mother has gone on holiday with her new husband. He is resentful that he has been abandoned by his mother, but Mary’s maternal instincts help him to refocus his anger. Paul and Angus initially rub each other the wrong way. But over the course of the next week they begin to bond, and during a road trip to Boston find some common connections that change the course of their lives.
The Holdovers is the latest film from filmmaker Alexander Payne, and it is, arguably, his best work since 2004’s Sideways. The film is set in the early 70s and from the outset Payne deliberately captures a 70s aesthetic with the use of the old Universal logo and the old-fashioned copyright MCMLXXI during the opening credits. The film captures the tone of those maverick independent movies of the 70s and is styled after some of the classic works of the late auteur Hal Ashby (Harold And Maude, etc). Cinematographer Eigil Bryld (In Bruges, etc) further added to the 70s aesthetic by shooting the film and recreating the look of old analog film stock of the era.
The Holdovers is the first feature film script written by tv writer David Hemingson and is loosely inspired by his own experiences at a New England boarding school. The script is articulate, well-written and the dialogue zings. The film has a gentle pace which suits the material, and it is filled with a deft mixture of warmth, humour and pathos, and Payne manages a delicate balance between the comedy and the drama. While The Holdovers tackles some big themes including ideas of entitlement and privilege, race, family, loss, tradition, integrity, the script is punctuated with moments of genuinely funny laugh out loud moments.
But as Payne and Hemingson slowly peel back the layers of the three main characters they reveal more of their backstories and make them much more sympathetic and complex than they appear on the surface. There is great chemistry between the three leads that brings the film alive during its quieter, more reflective moments. Giamatti is cast in a role that plays to his strengths and he delivers one of his strongest comic performances. Giamatti delivers a nuanced and subtle reading of the character, giving his usual gruff and unlikeable persona a touch of vulnerability and humanity and his performance has already garnered him a Golden Globe award. In his first film role Sessa is superb as the rebellious Angus, and he brings a sense of entitlement and wounded vanity to his performance. Randolph imbues her straight talking and no-nonsense character with a touch of compassion, simmering resentment and a stoic quality.
The Holdovers is the first great film of 2024!
★★★★
