By Elias Savada.
A big, gift-wrapped present filled with sentimentality and lovely, effective performances….”
Always a visionary, and one whose seven previous features as a director have garnered considerable acclaim—the sole, gaping-wound exception being 2017’s Downsizing, a disastrous journey into sci-fi dramedy with Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig—director-producer-writer Alexander Payne has been one of my favorite filmmakers since his 1996 debut with Citizen Ruth. It took such revelations as Election, Sideways, The Descendants, About Schmidt, and Nebraska to cement his name on cinema’s royalty map as one of Hollywood’s most creatively satirical minds. I’ll gladly forgive him one misstep in an otherwise immaculate career, especially with this lovely bounce back effort.
Payne’s storytelling skills, which co-depend very much on his directorial abilities, showcase how much of a dramatic powerhouse his films are, as all but two of them (as director) complement his written accompaniment, to the point that he won two Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars for co-scripting Sideways (2004) and The Descendants (2011). Like his earlier successes, The Holdovers flourishes on its small-scale balancing act between the lighter and darker moments in people’s lives, and the current offering maneuvers gracefully between the interactions surrounding a forced student-teacher relationship with a side serving of a compassionate soul mourning the death of her son in the Vietnam war.
Let’s not overlook the way Payne so gracefully handles actors, having secured his actors seven Academy Award nominated performances. Surprisingly, one of those was not Paul Giamatti, his muse from Sideways, who returns as the curmudgeonly centerpiece in The Holdovers. If the Academy of Arts and Sciences overlooks him again (beyond his single Supporting Actor nomination for 2005’s Cinderella Man), shame on it.
The script by David Hemingson—a debut feature piece after 20+ years as a television producer and writer—reflects a stunning, big screen poignancy. Based on his Connecticut prep school experiences, it’s a tightly woven period piece about the other side of Christmas. The loneliness of the holiday. Set 50+ years ago at the all-boys, white-columned Barton Academy, a fictional New England prep school, the decade is put in place at the film’s get go, with the movie company logos (Focus Features and Miramax), the MPAA’s R-rating placard, and even a faux copyright notice are set in that decade’s time and place, with the opening credit soundtrack full of analog cracks and pops and the film’s digital origins given a grainy reverse facelift. Aside from the spartan, snow-drenched setting, and the wardrobe and makeup that reflect the times, the film’s aspect ratio (1.85:1) used by cinematographer Eigil Bryld, was popular on films back then, including Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail (1973). (No surprise there as Payne was one of the several talking heads giving tribute to his mentor in Amy Stone’s documentary Hal which heralded Ashby’s membership in the “New Hollywood.”) The production team has captured the vintage artifacts without overshadowing the story, direction, and performances.
As winter break 1970 approaches and the students head off to various warmer climes, Paul Hunham (Giamatti), an adjunct professor of ancient history, finds himself assigned babysitting duties to a handful of youngsters whose plans to vacate the premises have fallen through. The huffy Hunham has no patience for the young turncoats, and they (as well as most of the student population and faculty) have not an ounce of admiration for his autocratic ways. The teacher’s only friend is seemingly inside a Jim Beam bottle.
Forty minutes in, all but one of the five students have been helicoptered out of the wintry internment, leaving brainy but troubled junior Angus Tully to manage the dictatorial mind games from Hunham. The only other school employee left to cater to the holdovers (great name for a movie!) is head cook Mary Lamb, herself dealing with the death of her only child Curtis, apparently the only black student at the school—and the only one who did not manage to get a student deferral from the overseas war. Tully’s shoes are filled by Dominic Sessa, an incredibly talented actor with no screen experience found studying at Deerfield Academy, one of the film’s locations. A very strong breakthrough performance, holding his own against both Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Lamb, and the combination is divine.
What follows is a coming-of-age tale for all three of the central characters, but especially for the two men. Heartfelt and lightly comic episodes ensue; tough love follows. Hunham’s self-serving bah humbug attitude evaporates, and a heartwarming piece of holiday fare is born, no doubt reminding many viewers of Dead Poets Society.
Yup, it’s a big, gift-wrapped present filled with sentimentality and lovely, effective performances, expertly crafted scenes, and a terrific story. The melancholy yet uplifting score and songs that dot the soundtrack are the cherry on top. The Holdovers is a slam dunk for award consideration.
Elias Savada is a movie copyright researcher, critic, craft beer geek, and avid genealogist based in Bethesda, Maryland. He helps program the Spooky Movie International Movie Film Festival, and previously reviewed for Film Threat and Nitrate Online. He is an executive producer of the horror film German Angst and the documentary Nuts! He co-authored, with David J. Skal, Dark Carnival: the Secret World of Tod Browning (a revised edition will be published by Centipede Press).
Excellent work! I absolutely adored this movie. From the very beginning, it felt like an instant holiday classic.