Payne Relief
Alexander Payne tones down the poor white guy energy for some actual humanity – but not all the way down.
the Holdovers
Director: Alexander Payne • Writer: David Hemingson
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Brady Hepner, Andrew Garman
USA • 2hrs 13mins
Opens Hong Kong March 7 • IIB
Grade: B
Full disclosure: I mostly hate Alexander Payne’s films. At this point it’s hard to imagine him ever making something so, shall we say, woman-centric as his abortion satire debut Citizen Ruth he’s been mired in middle-aged white guy angst for so long. It really peaked with Sideways, which (and I’m loathe to gender a fucking movie) is quite possibly the biggest dude movie ever made. This is a movie in which chick magnets (!) Paul Giamatti (bless him, love him, but c’mon) and Thomas Haden Church (Sandman in Spider-Man 3) are lusted after by Virginia Madsen (!!) and Sandra Oh (!!!). If that’s not magic-of-the-movies male fantasy bullshit nothing is. Pretentious male fantasy at that. But I am in the minority.
Suffice it to say it comes as something of a surprise to find Payne’s Oscar nominee The Holdovers an entertaining found family dramedy set in the wake of some of the most volatile years in recent American history (outside 2016-2020), and still mired in the muck of it all. Television writer David Hemingson, trying his hand at a film for the first time, wallows in a great many clichés – everyone has a troubled past or deep-seated regrets, everyone’s misunderstood or has unrealised dreams – but context is king, and the vivid, tactile 1970 setting (thanks to production designer Ryan Warren Smith and some clever retro cinematography by No Hard Feelings and In Bruges’ Eigil Bryld) adds a bittersweet and often just bitter flavour to the story that’s very much about the price of idealism and the frequent need to compromise it. It’s arguably one of Payne’s best, least self-indulgent films. But he didn’t write it, so there ya go.
For some reason, the 1970s
Paul Hunham (Oscar nominee Giamatti) is a classics teacher at Barton Academy, a boarding school near Boston, and a right prick who seems to revel in making his entitled, dullard students’ – at least in his view – lives miserable. He fails everyone, all the time, including the sons of wealthy donors and congressmen, much to the chagrin of headmaster Hardy Woodrup (Andrew Garman), who has to make nice with these people to keep the school’s endowment… healthy. As Christmas approaches (yeah, the release is a bit out of date), Hunham finds himself drawing the short straw to babysit the “holdovers” on campus over the break.
Angus (first-timer Dominic Sessa), one of five holdovers, is a self-satisfied know-it-all, unpopular with his peers and just kind of angry and smart-mouthed all the time. Holding over with him are good-natured resident jock Jason (Michael Provost), Angus’s pro-weed nemesis Teddy (discount Zac Efron Brady Hepner), Mormon Alex (Ian Dolley) and homesick Korean national Ye-Joon (Jim Kaplan). When Jason’s über-wealthy Big Pharma (Big Aerospace?) dad drops in at the last minute and invites everyone skiing, Angus is the only one left behind: Hunham can’t get hold of his parents for consent. Off they go, and Angus spends the holiday with Hunham, the grieving school cook, Mary (Oscar nominee Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Lost City, The Idol), and occasionally the janitor Danny (Naheem Garcia).
Among the questions The Holdovers ponders is whether or not Angus has any kind of real relationship with his parents. Will Angus and Hunham find common ground and forge a surrogate father-son bond over the two-week holiday? Will Mary be able to accept her son’s death in Vietnam (still raging in 1970), where the Barton student found himself in a bid to afford college? Will any of these wypipo see the inherent inequality in that? Will Hunham become a better person? Will Angus? Is the Pope Catholic?
The Holdovers is a Christmastime reflection on life and all its ugly, messy bits – class, race, privilege, familial bonds and taking all of them for granted – that’s ultimately very familiar in an early-’70s, muted New Hollywood way: think films by Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude), Robert Altman (McCabe & Mrs. Miller) or Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces). But it’s also buoyed by a super-strong cast. Sessa mostly holds his own, but Giamatti and Randolph truly run away with the movie. Giamatti is a master of the annoyingly erudite zinger, and Hemingson gives him some doozies: “For most people, life is like a henhouse ladder: shitty and short” is his retort to Teddy when he disrespects Mary’s work; he calls a restaurant giving the trio a hard time a “fascist hash foundry” and his students “hormonal vulgarians”. But Giamatti humanises Hunham enough to make us understand him. Randolph, though underwritten, makes Mary a complete character – her visit with her sister is gutting – and to his credit Payne never steers into nobly suffering Black woman territory. As is often the case, she’s the best part of whatever she’s in (again, The Idol). It’s one of Payne’s best and also one of his most honest films, if not a particularly revelatory one. And it’s unlikely to take a place in the Christmas Movie Pantheon. — DEK