Attribution:Fernando de Sousa from Melbourne, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
All the Lonely People: Film Review of The Holdovers
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
By Geoff Carter
The films of Alexander Payne are quintessential quest stories. In The Descendants, a middle-aged man tries to come to terms with his wife’s imminent death, understand her infidelities, and reconnect with his alienated teenage daughters. In Sideways, a divorced middle-aged man tries to make sense of his life, taking his friend, a womanizer who cares about nothing but his own selfish needs, on one final wine-tasting trip. In Nebraska, a middle-aged son humors his aged father by taking him on a deluded quest to cash in a useless lottery ticket.
His characters seek, in varying degrees, redemption, explanations, and meaning in their lives. They are typically lost and disappointed men who have retreated from the difficulties and pain in their lives. Most of them—to some degree—are losers.
The Holdovers, a film set at a 1970 New England prep school, is another one of Payne’s examinations of loneliness and alienation. Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is cut from the same mold as a typical Alexander Payne anti-hero. A strict and uncompromising classics teacher at Barton boarding school, he is hated by his students for his tough grading and constantly chastised by his headmaster (a former student) for his refusal to pass privileged students solely because they are legacies. One student he flunked, the son of a senator, had his admission to Princeton revoked; as a result, his father rescinded his donation to the school.
In late December, Hunham is informed by Headmaster Garman (Dr. Hardy Woodrip) that he has been chosen to stay at Barton with students who cannot go home for the two-week holiday. Since Paul never leaves campus anyway, he seems a logical choice. He finds he will be supervising Teddy Kountze (Brady Hepner), a nasty sort of bully, Jason Smith (Michael Provost), the school’s star quarterback, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a bright but troubled student who is Teddy’s mortal enemy. A couple of younger boys whose parents are unable to bring them home are also stuck with Hunham for the holidays. Cafeteria worker Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who has recently lost her son in Vietnam, has been assigned to cook for the holdovers.
On top of the fact that they will be quartered in the infirmary and that the school Christmas tree has been sold back to the dealer, Professor Hunham informs the students that they will be exercising and studying every day of their vacation. There will be no parties or celebrations for the boys. While Hunham is determined to make the boys’ existences as joyless as possible, he connects with Mary, visiting her in her apartment and watching—for his very first time—The Newlywed Game. Mary is still obviously grieving for her son Curtis and tells Paul that the only reason she is at Barton was to ensure him a good prep education and that he had been accepted to a good college, there was no way they could have afforded it—except for the GI Bill, underlining Hunham’s constant complaint that it is the rich and privileged who get all the breaks at Barton.
In third day of incarceration, while studying in the library, the boys hear a helicopter zooming overhead. Jason’s father apparently had a change of heart and decided to take his son skiing. The boy asks his father to take everyone else, too, and he agrees—except in the case of Angus Tully, whose parents cannot be reached. So, the party is whittled down to three. In a fit of pique, Angus leads Hunham on a chase through the school and ends up hurting himself. When Hunham tells him he will probably lose his job because of the insurance report, Tully lies and manages to convince the nurse not to file an insurance claim.
At a local bar during dinner, Tully almost manages to get into a fight, but is saved by the waitress Lydia Crane (Carrie Preston) who happens to be a Barton staffer. Against Hunham’s better judgement, they go to the party, where Mary suffers a breakdown and Angus meets a pretty young girl. As they’re leaving, Paul berates Angus, telling him that absolutely no one in the world wants him. Mary, in turn, tells Paul how nasty it is to treat a child who has been left behind for Christmas like that.
Contrite and guilty, Paul gets a tree and some gifts and says he’ll do anything they want for Christmas. Angus declares he wants to go to Boston. Paul reluctantly accedes and they go on their “field trip”, dropping off Mary at her sister’s place along the way. Angus and Paul go to a Museum of Fine Arts, ice-skating, and start bonding—at least until Angus attempts to escape to go on a mysterious personal mission. They return, but after school resumes, Angus and Paul find themselves in some serious trouble for their little field trip.
The Holdovers is, in many ways, what a viewer might expect from an Alexander Payne film. Characters damaged by betrayal, loss, infidelities, and disappointments wander through the landscapes of his film trying to find meaning, and maybe—if they’re lucky—hope. The major difference in this film and other Payne films is that it is not a single character navigating the landscapes of individual pain and suffering in The Holdovers, it is three. Sometimes their quests for meaning and redemption intersect, sometimes not, but it is the characters’ spirits of sacrifice and charity toward others that differentiates this film from the others. Hunham (a pun on human?) jeopardizes his career for Angus. Mary gives up her cherished mementos of a lost son to her expectant sister. Angus himself covers for Hunham when necessary. Redemption here—as is fitting for a Christmas movie—has to do with giving.
The acting here is superb. Paul Giamatti can portray a sad-sack loser (Sideways) with as much deftness and pathos as he can a sharp silver-tongued promoter (Cinderella Man), a smartass infantryman (Saving Private Ryan), or a determined prosecutor (Billionaire). The common denominator in all these characters is Giamatti’s humanity. He is always relatable, always a common man. As Paul Hunham, Giamatti manages to combine elements of bitterness, despair, hope, and humor into a character that is as hard to like as he is to dislike. He’s got guts. He stands for something, and there’s a buoyancy, a sense of hope underlying Professor Hunham’s crusty exterior. His refusal to lower his standards demands respect, and his refusal to join the human race demands our sympathy.
As Angus, Dominic Sessa is a bundle of anger, frustration, and adolescent angst. His physical awkwardness is at times touching, at other times hilarious. It is a wonderful, carefully calibrated performance—especially for someone his age. As Mary, Da’Vine Joy Randolph manages to convey a deep and abiding sense of grief carefully hidden under a cool and controlled exterior. Even when talking about her son to Paul, she does not begin to reveal he extent of her grief.
The Holdovers is not a ground-breaking or a particularly innovative film. It is, however, a very satisfying one. Although the plot and the ending are eminently predictable, the whole point (as it is for Paul, Angus, and Mary) is the journey, the emerging realization of their place in a world singularly devoid of meaning.