“For most people life is a henhouse ladder, shitty and short,” a grumpy teacher furiously shouts back at one of his students in Alexander Payne’s Oscar-nominated The Holdovers. It’s a sequence that encapsulates the conflict at the heart of this dramedy. A middle-aged man, no more socially evolved than the students he teaches, must accommodate the transgressions of a crabby young student who much like himself, would rather be somewhere else. Besides generational friction, though, this tender comedy also focuses on loneliness across the bridges of gender, race and age. The kind of loneliness that irksomely floats to the surface during periods of obligatory bliss. As a poignant Christmas product, this heartfelt film has the tint of a classic. As a study of warring brands of pain and self-loathing, it’s deeper, with a lot more to say.
Set in the 1970s, The Holdovers is a loose reference to children held back at boarding schools during the festive periods. Someone’s parents can’t come to pick them up, some would rather not have them back, so on and so forth. Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, an obsessively cranky teacher of Ancient History at a school he himself grew up studying in. Hunham is bitter, prudish and a bit of a spoilsport. He is disliked by students and colleagues alike, except Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the cafeteria lady living with her own slice of grief. The two are stuck at school around Christmas, alongside the resentful, foul-mouthed student Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa). Tully’s aggressive patronising of his accidental guardians becomes the catalyst for a compassionate unravelling of ache felt across the fences of age, race and social accords.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph plays Mary Lamb, the cafeteria lady living with her own slice of grief. (Image via X/ @cinematogrxphy )
Set in the backdrop of the Vietnam war, masculinity, isolation and existentialism shore up the corny coating of a film that though beautifully crafted, is written like a spiky feud between people who feel misunderstood. Hunham’s disdain for his own pupil stems from a cracked ego, the extent of which the film casually unfurls for the viewer over the course of a two-hour blitz. For a middle-aged man who has no friends, nor love interests, his dynamic with the equally lonely Lamb, is a curiously observed space of interracial friendships in an era where they may not have been as acceptable. He voraciously defends her in her absence and opens up in front of her, in ways he wouldn’t elsewhere. To this kind-hearted companionship of functional, if not emotional relevance, Tully serves as this chaotic injection of anger and mutiny. The three predictably bond by unloading in social imprisonment that which they wouldn’t have maybe with the freedom of the world.
Dominic Sessa plays Angus Tully, a resentful, foul-mouthed student. (Image via X / @cinematogrxphy)
Directed by Alexander Payne, The Holdovers is not only exquisite to look at, but also disruptively simple in its mannerisms. Restful in texture yet pointy in its dialogue, the film can feel like something that has been resurrected from the archive. The authenticity, the narrative invention is clean enough to pass the litmus test of nostalgia. And so is the deftness with which humour and friction are introduced into a premise that could so easily translate to intimate hell. Instead, The Holdovers is perfectly perched on the ledge of wistfulness from where the world is neither too grim nor too obtrusive to the courage of a beating heart. People aren’t good or bad, it says. They just aren’t where they’d wish to be. And even though Tully and Hunham’s combative personalities ultimately give way to shades of vulnerability, a black woman’s unheard grief offers the backdrop of a bigger, if formless nightmare hanging over the droopy shoulders of whatever petty beef your brain chooses to occupy itself with. In comparison, self-loathing feels like an accessory.
Dominic Sessa and Paul Giamatti. (Image via X @GoldDerby)
Nominated in five categories at the Oscars, The Holdovers is gentle and affecting. It approaches grief as a relative process. Everyone’s dealing with something. They’re just doing it in wildly different ways. Giamatti is exceptional, as this neuortic teacher who can’t help but loathe the life he has been reduced to live. He is operatic but also selectively kind, staunch but also secretly vulnerable. It’s a terrific performance that though it might not take home the award, is certified cinematic gold.
The Holdovers is possibly Payne’s most richly detailed film. Insomuch that it makes space for a peripheral character to sort of become the luminous soul of a film. Even though two cantankerous man-children take up most of the room, the quiet eloquence of a someone who has been through much worse, hovers as this shadow of wisdom and sobriety. Mediation is maybe the only way to solve a conflict between deaf speakers. This is possibly analogous to a world that can’t help but blame a neighbour for its lack of inner peace. Whereas there is more to each fleck of dust that was once the ruin of a would-be life. Maybe it takes being held back from constantly running away, to figure that part of us out.
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