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Is 'The Holdovers' A Return To Form For Alexander Payne? Here's What The Reviews Say
Alexander Payne isn't quite a household name, but he's behind some very popular movies. And the guy has two Oscars, so you should probably know about him if you want more good stuff to watch some day. He's directed films like "Election," "About Schmidt," "Sideways," "The Descendants," "Nebraska" and "Downsizing."
Now Payne's back, after six years, with his latest drama featuring co-collaborator — and oftentimes Albert Einstein impersonator — Paul Giamatti. This honestly might be his best chance at winning the Academy Award for Best Actor, if he really wants to go for it.
"The Holdovers" comes out everywhere on November 10, 2023. It stars the aforementioned Giamatti, as well as newcomer Dominic Sessa, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Carrie Preston. Here's what the critics have to say about this one.
The premise
David Hemingson (best known for writing TV series like "Kitchen Confidential") has crafted an incisive screenplay for Payne. The time is Christmas of 1970, and the setting is a hidebound New England prep school preparing for the holidays. Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly classics instructor who wins the unenviable job of staying at school over the holidays to look after the boys who are for various reasons unable to return home for the break. Most of the boys despise him, and he has no more fondness for them, but they all settle in for what promises to be a dyspeptic Christmas season.
"The Holdovers" casts Giamatti as a grumpy boarding school teacher charged with babysitting an unruly student.
The three leads are spectacular and will get Oscar noms for sure
Paul Giamatti will rip your heart out. Da'Vine Joy Randolph will also rip your heart out. This kid Dominic Sessa (first film!) will rip your heart out, too. Dear Lord, someone please call a cardiologist.
With the wrong actors, "The Holdovers" would not be the magnificent film it is. Giamatti may be the best he's ever been — ever reliable, Giamatti is outstanding as a hardened professor with a softness hidden within a labyrinth. He carries much of the film through his charm (or lack thereof), and that's nothing short of magnetizing. Sessa may be the find of the year — in a rather serendipitous twist, Sessa is a senior at the school where the film was shot. He provides a perfect emotional and comedic foil to the hardened Hunham. And both are brilliant alongside Randolph, who balances humor and heartache with gusto.
The ways in which the trio come together, apart and back together again are far subtler and less conflict- and monologue-driven than they could have been in the hands of a less talented writer. There's no makeshift family created here, just three lost people finding commonalities at what feels like the end of the world, hunkered down at a snowy New England school as everyone else enjoys what's allegedly the most wonderful time of the year. Payne understands that there's a great sadness to the Christmas period for many people and that's felt most poignantly by Mary, a deservedly more substantial role for Randolph, an actor who has been impressing on the outskirts since breaking out in 2019's "Dolemite is My Name." She's excellent here, given far more to do than what she's usually afforded and gives so much more even during scenes in which she's working with very little. A shot of her tipsily reminiscing at a Christmas party, thinking of her son as an Artie Shaw record plays, and a brief scene where she unpacks her son's baby belongings are both shattering, enough to secure her a best supporting actress nomination come next year.
Alexander Payne got his fastball back
The way Payne captures Barton Academy, the film's prestigious Christian prep school, is akin to Wes Anderson's conception of "Rushmore," at least in imaginative idiosyncrasy if not hyper-stylized aesthetic. It feels both like a place depicted at a specific period in time, as well as a place out of time, with shots of its snow-capped buildings backgrounded by gray skies lacking in detail, as if this institution were dropped in the middle of nowhere from Payne's imagination (sketched, perhaps, from several of his own Omaha alma mater). Its teenage students, like the foul-mouthed Angus, bicker like any other hormonal boys in close proximity, taking shots at each other's mothers for no reason in particular, but there's a wistfulness to the way these scenes are introduced, given the light, folky guitar-plucking that scores establishing shots of each structure and hallway.
On paper, this seems to have the potential to veer into overly sentimental territory, but that has never been Payne's style. With films such as "The Descendants" and "About Schmidt," he has probed subjects such as death, grief, and loneliness with a distinctly human eye and a healthy sense of humor — and "The Holdovers" is no exception. "The Holdovers" marks Payne's first period piece, which is hard to believe given how seamlessly the trappings of the era are rendered with painstaking care, even down to the design of the studio title cards that precede the film. But perhaps the 1970 setting's greatest magic trick is its ability to make the film feel of its bygone time, rather than simply striving to replicate it.
It has quite the retro-feeling and -looking film
Showing at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, "The Holdovers" is set in 1970 and assumes the tone and style of that era, from its opening credits (and studio logo introductions) to its grainy visuals and cornucopia of formal devices, including omnipresent transitional fades and slow zooms across rooms and through city streets toward (and, in one amusing instance, away from) characters. Employing Damien Jurado's "Silver Joy" and Cat Stevens's "The Wind" as mournful musical bookends for his tale, Payne overtly channels the cinematic feel of the decade. At the same time, he crafts a distinctly evocative Yuletide atmosphere, his action set during the chilly, snowy final two weeks before 1971, and his soundtrack filled with holiday tunes whose joyfulness is tinged with a particular brand of sweet Christmas melancholy.
In the winter of 1970, it's also a pipeline to college, and thus a deferment from being drafted into the Vietnam War. Needless to say, gawky junior Angus Tully — a petulant twerp played by newcomer Dominic Sessa, who Payne plucked out of a high school theater program while location scouting at Deerfield Academy — is terrified when his step-father threatens to send him to military academy if he gets expelled from another school. But that doesn't stop him from hating Barton all the same, and Angus isn't exactly thrilled when his mom disinvites him from their vacation to St. Kitts so that she can honeymoon with her deep-pocketed new husband.
TL;DR
"The Holdovers" is a wonderful revelation from an excellent director who proves he's still able to take us by surprise.
Hilarious and heartwarming, this is one of Alexander Payne's best films.
It's the warmest cinematic experience you'll have all year.
Alexander Payne's '70s-set Christmastime movie is familiar and cozily beautiful.
[Image: YouTube]
