Screenplay Written by David Hemingson
Directed by Alexander Payne
**** (four stars)
RATED R
They're cutting down trees
They're putting op reindeer
Oh, I wish I had a river
-"River"
Joni Mitchell
The deep melancholy of the holiday season cannot be overstated.
Whether bittersweet and sublime or otherwise filled with crippling despair, the holiday season, especially during final two weeks of the year, are considerably fraught with levels of sadness as the end of a year signifies times of reflection and often regrets, combatting the joyousness which often feels aggressive. Even at its most exciting and festive, Christmas Day itself can often feel like a running sand timer as we all realize that even this day, just like all others, will invariably end, leading into the next day which resets the sand timer for another full year of waiting for the day to arrive again.
My own feelings towards the holidays have cycled through all of these emotions, with Christmas Days over my lifetime swaying from beautiful to painful to hectic and as of this year, peacefully quiet. But what has been ever present is the seasonal melancholy, which arrives in forms ranging from the end of the semester school cycle, with all of its pressures and temporary goodbyes to the arrival of New Year's Eve, where those aforementioned reflections and regrets speak their loudest directly alongside the hopes that the mistakes and failures of the year refuse to rise again in the next year. For all of the family expectations, visitations and means of togetherness, it is somehow, at least for me, an increasingly insular time where interior mediations about who I have been and what I hope to become continue to merge and clash, and always leaving me feeling emotionally adrift wondering if everything will, at long last, ever click into place.
Alexander Payne's "The Holdovers" is a masterfully textured, empathetic, quiet snow globe of a film that encapsulates the seasonal melancholy brilliantly. It is undeniably his finest film since "The Descendants" (2011), beautifully reuniting his cinematic storytelling with Paul Giamatti, who starred in what may be Payne's best film, "Sideways" (2004). Furthermore, it is exactly the type of film that has not been en vogue for several years now due to the suffocating prevalence of superheroes and other franchised properties as it is a slice of life film about human beings attempting to navigate life as best as possible. Certainly, in and of itself, this quality does not great film make. But, Alexander Payne and his team do their finest to mine the human comedy and tragedy within the film's core characters making them relatable and therefore, memorable. "The Holdovers" is not solely memorable. It is one of 2023's very best films.
Set in New England during December 1970, Alexander Payne's "The Holdovers" stars Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham, an embittered, strict History teacher at Barton boarding school, the same school he once attended on scholarship. Disliked by students and faculty members alike--save for the kind school office administrator Lydia Crane (Carrie Preston)--due to his seemingly archaic views on education and academic integrity in a world of silver spoon students and legacy donors.
Paul is forced into remaining at Barton during the school's two week Winter break to chaperone the "holdovers," students remaining on campus who are unable to reunite with families for the holidays, including his bright yet deeply acerbic student and therefore, nemesis, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa). Also remaining behind at Barton is cafeteria administrator and head chef Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), grieving the death of her son and Barton graduate, killed in the Vietnam war.
With nowhere to go and required to be in each other's company when none of them would choose to be together, the trio navigates the seemingly endless two week holiday period in cojoined solitude while also gradually finding new connections and understandings as they confront their private traumas and their approaching futures in the new year of 1971.
If you remember, or if you are not familiar, I invite you to please take some minutes to listen to Joni Mitchell's wintry ballad "River" from her album "Blue" (released June 22, 1971) and referenced at the outset of tis review. Once you listen, or remember, you will gather a perfect sense of the kind of film Alexander Payne's "The Holdovers" aspires to be and what I feel it reaches. Payne beautifully captures the exquisite sadness of the holiday season, the very kind that exists within that muffled snowfall silence, the low, slow breaths that escape from our mouths and the hurts that haunt our hearts and heads
Upon seeing the vintage studio logos at the film's outset and followed by the vintage opening credit design, Payne effectively evoked a film that was to look, sound and feel like a work from the time period in which his story exists, something very close to say Director Hal Ashby's "Harold and Maude" (1971). In fact, the entire production design, from locations, sets, hairstyles, music, and most notably, the visual sheen from Cinematographer Elgil Bryld, is meticulous. In fact, the authenticity to the re-creation of 1970 felt as ingenious as the detail found in Writer/Director Richard Linklater's 1976 themed "Dazed and Confused" (1993), again making his film feel like it was an artifact from the time period instead of a film set within a certain time period.
By the same token, Alexander Payne accomplishes a similar feat as achieved in Writer/Director Kelly Fremon Craig's lovely "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret?" her adaptation of the 1970 set Judy Blume novel, in which while firmly stationed in the past, it is a work that mirrors and comments upon the concerns of the present, a tactic Payne's protagonist of Paul Hunham himself would be thrilled by due to his love of history and how it also relates to the here and now.
The beauty of Alexander Payne's "The Holdovers" burrows far deeper than any cinematic aesthetics. With David Hemingson's wonderful screenplay as its base and fueled by excellent performance from the entire cast, Payne's direction--just as with his finest films--remains ever sensitive, observant and unforced. Not one moment ever feels prefabricated, all of the drama is inherent and never needs any additional heft. "The Holdovers," especially during this point in relatively mainstream cinema, is a film that breathes.
I have noticed that despite the acclaim for the film, there has been some criticism that Payne is not immune to a handful of cliches. Well...I guess that I can see that point as there is nothing new to themes of discovering that the similarities between individuals tend to outweigh the differences or that in the grand scheme, we all truly need each other in order to navigate the world and ourselves. But, quite often what feels like cliches are moments of sincere, honest truth for if we really did just take a few moments to listen, to feel, to metaphorically walk in another's shoes, where would our understanding and therefore, empathy for each other be or extend towards?
Alexander Payne's "The Holdovers" is a film about emotional isolation which is compounded by being physically isolated from more desired locales, from family, to even our own most private wishes for oneself. In doing so, any sense of cliche is erased as the focus is firmly riveted to the primary trio of characters who populate the story and we witness how they confront themselves as much as each other, how they ask extremely difficult questions of themselves, and arrive at individualized crossroads where either life might change or it will remains painfully stagnant. Everything plays out against this backdrop of the holiday season and this visually bitter winter grey scale, where the cold hit your bones and the snow remains ever present, blindingly white and seemingly with the intent of warding away any other season for good.
Payne captures the emotional truths over and again with a complete lack of maudlin or overly sentimentalized presentation often providing echoes to the boarding school blues and adult/teenage male relationships of Writer/Producer John Hughes and Director Peter Faiman's "Dutch" (1991) Director Martin Brest's "Scent Of A Woman" (1992), Wes Anderson's "Rushmore" (1998) and "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001) and unquestionably, the annual holiday loneliness contained in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965).
As previously stated, all of the performances, from top to bottom, are excellent. As Mary, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, demonstrated the range of her abilities as I remember first seeing her in what was the Jack Black role on the television streaming adaptation of "High Fidelity" (2020). Admittedly, the role does feel to be a tad underwritten but even so, Randolph plumbed some significant depths of not only being a Mother in mourning but also the high wire act of being a working class Black Mother mourning within the White space of a wealthy New England all male boarding school. The difficulties of showing her true face in such a space and furthermore, to whom, which makes her friendship with Paul Hunham so telling as they are both outcasts.
The heart and soul of the film rests in the relationship between Angus and Paul. As Angus Tully, Dominic Essa--in his debut screen performance, no less--is marvelous and more than holds against his own alongside the formidable Paul Giamatti. Resembling a young, yet more gangly Tom Hanks, Sessa richly captures the outer shell of teenage swagger and venom while deftly illuminating the wounded, forgotten child inside, discarded once again within a damaged family that we wonder if they ever wanted him in the first place.
To eventually be heard and seen by a figure like Paul Hunham is palpable as Paul, throughout the trajectory of his life on multi-levels revealed throughout the film, feels to have been discarded by life itself and so, he engulfs himself in the world where he felt happiest yet for seemingly decades, even his happy place has lost its luster. Paul Giamatti completely elevates what could have existed as nothing more than a sad sack, and through his expertise, brings his character to vivid, painfully aware, richly melancholic life with such pain and grace, making him perhaps a distant relative to whom he portrayed in "Sideways."
Paul Hunham, like the film itself, is a throwback. A man who firmly believes in the ideals instilled in him by his schooling and has, in turn, applied those very lessons into all areas of his life. Yet now, as an adult, in a world that cares not for what it proclaims to teach but rewards the undeserved for no other reason than wealth, notoriety, family legacies and hefty donations, integrity be damned. To being confronted with a world, over and again, that runs as a counterpoint to what he was taught to believe, it has upended him to the point of emotional and developmental paralysis.
If Angus, in some ways represents Paul's past self when the future felt to be so unwritten and Paul is a representation of Angus' future should he consume himself with his own disappointments, traumas and failings, their union throughout "The Holdovers," is a crucial duet (especially for Angus with the realities of Vietnam looming in the background) where each of them are given the opportunities to realize that life is not set in stone, and regardless of what has occurred and the pains of what is, the future is still unwritten and neither of them are literally men out of time.
If we really took the time. Just took a little time to try and see each other, then would we ever have to feel ourselves as being truly alone in the universe, especially when we house troubles and regrets that are indeed universal? Alexander Payne's "The Holdovers" argues that no one ever wishes to feel this way themselves, and nor should anyone...especially during the holidays.
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