Alexander Payne makes films that make your heart melt, not every time, but again and again. This is due to the incomparable relationship he has with his characters. He sees them as they are, with their character flaws and quirks, but with a warm, forgiving look. Because that is exactly what defines people: they are all imperfect, and because the joy of forgiveness is one of the most beautiful emotions of all, it should stay that way.
The two guys who play Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church in Payne’s “Sideways” rumble through the California vineyards, begging for forgiveness incarnate; and George Clooney as the expectant widower in “The Descendants”, who suddenly has to look after his children himself, is touching in his desperation. Nowhere did Clooney appear so human, tiny and large at the same time, as in the scene in which Payne had him running down the driveway in slippers. The scene is hilarious – because it reminds us that human dignity can be destroyed at any moment.
Payne’s new film “The Holdovers” is about a teacher, one of his students and a housekeeper. Because no one else wants them, they stay together in an abandoned boarding school over the holidays. And this time Payne lets his leading actor Paul Giamatti walk, with a similar effect to Clooney – he goes down a hallway in pursuit of a protégé. It’s not quite as enjoyable as it was back then. But Payne has already placed enough other burdens on this history teacher, Paul Hunham, who Giamatti plays.
Not presenting such a figure is a feat in itself
Hunham has glass eyes and a drinking problem, and – as is discussed more than once in “The Holdovers” – he somehow smells like fish. His students don’t particularly love him, but that has little to do with the above-mentioned qualities; it’s due to his strictness and the fact that he so enjoys scolding them for their incompetence. Payne and Giamatti draw this guy without any cynicism – creating such a character and never showing him is a feat in itself.
Somewhere across the United States there is probably still a frustrated Paul Hunham lamenting the loss of academic standards. But “The Holdovers” isn’t set in today’s America, where elite universities have come under fire for giving double-digit percentages of their seats to the offspring of alumni and sponsors. Alexander Payne set his film in 1970.
In the best sense of the word, the result now looks as if it was actually filmed back then – a place like Barton, the school that is supposed to have existed in the film for a hundred years, is removed from time anyway; and the fact that Payne doesn’t overdo it with the 70s music and the accompanying fashion accessories makes “The Holdovers” look even less like a costume film and even more like a masterpiece that was lost for fifty years.
Payne, Giamatti and the author – David Hemingson, born in 1964, who previously wrote television scripts, makes his late cinema debut here – are also connected by the experience of having attended a boarding school in the 1970s, as Paul Giamatti explains in the interview. This certainly helped in the fine drawing of the interaction between the rules and soft spots in the heart.
The main character, Paul Hunham, is not a bad guy. What at first glance seems like a little man’s abuse of power, is actually serious concern. Not always for the students, sometimes just for the world itself. It bothers Hunham that the little flat pipers sitting in front of him will one day take off, even though they have no sense of history and it is almost impossible to teach them ancient Greek.
And all of this, he moans again and again, because the parents of these arrogant snots have the money for an elite boarding school. In fact, some of the guys he’s assigned to look after over the holidays are real pains in the ass. One person picks on the younger ones, fails every exam and yet is convinced of his inherent right to a place at Cornell; Another is just waiting for his father to pick him up in the helicopter and take him to a luxury ski resort, which is what happens.
As Christmas approaches, there are only three people left at the school other than the janitor: Hunham, the cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), whose son has just been killed in action in Vietnam and who masks her grief with harshness, and the student Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), who hides his pain behind arrogance – his mother doesn’t want him with her, she would rather go away for the holidays with her new husband.
The three remaining have to stick together: Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti (from left) in “The Holdovers”.
(Photo: Seacia Pavao/Universal Pictures)
Paul Giamatti has already received a Golden Globe for his performance and is now nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars, while Da’Vine Joy Randolph is nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Dominic Sessa is almost the equal of both of them. Sometimes he looks like a lost child, only to have a little devil flash back in his eyes the next moment. This is his very first time in front of the camera and we’ll be hearing more about him.
You see a turning point, a clash of generations
This sad emergency community, which then goes on an illegal journey, is alternately funny and touching. Tully first tries to drive his hated teacher crazy. The cook Mary adds darkly humorous comments to everything. Sometimes, when she slams the dishes she made from the leftovers in the refrigerator onto the table, she does so non-verbally.
The growing empathy for each other – at some point Tully also thaws – creates a kind of Christmas miracle. Hunham and Mary quickly pull together because she knows that he is the only one who clearly sees what happened to her: her son was the only black student at Barton, and only because she worked there – and at He ended up in the army because it couldn’t pay for college.
It’s a turning point that you see here, a clash of generations – and that brings the film closer to the present again. Some things are always true anyway: the sincerity that Hunham preaches was and is a good idea; Discrimination still has a lot to do with the distribution of wealth; and it doesn’t hurt to remember that cohesion comes not from seeing the world the same way, but from acknowledging the concerns and needs of people who are very different from you.
Why such a small story ends up being such a big film, nominated for five Oscars and even Best Picture? Because he tells a great story about yesterday and says so much about the present. Because when people are so lovingly depicted in their imperfection, every single figure feels like a look in the mirror. And because in the end Tully and Hunham know what’s important again. Ideally, you can share in this wisdom, at least for a few moments after the end of this wonderful film.
The Holdovers, USA 2023 – Director: Alexander Payne. Screenplay: David Hemingson. Camera: Eigil Bryld. Starring: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Universal, 133 minutes. Cinema release: January 24, 2024.