Movie Review: ‘The Holdovers’

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Carrie Preston

Plot: A curmudgeon history teacher at a New England Boarding School is forced to stay on site over Christmas, along with a catering manager who just lost her son in the Vietnam War, to look after the small group of students who couldn’t make it home.

Review: With almost exclusively positive reviews and awards being delivered by the truckload we felt an obligation to check out The Holdovers even though we didn’t have a clue what we were getting into. It’s a sombre, but not depressing, dip into a point of intersection between three figures each carrying a heavy emotional burden – a strict and disliked teacher, a poorly behaved and tempered student and a woman minority dealing with grief. Over the course of a holiday in which they’re been thrown together they learn a great deal about each other…and a little something about themselves.

Our principal characters are Paul Hunham (Giamatti), Angus Tully (Sessa) and Mary Lamb (Randolph), each a member of the staff or student body at an elite New England school for students from wealthy families. Paul was once a scholarship student at Barton, now a long-serving classics professor with a hostile personality, strict and demeaning classroom presence and known for being a tough assessor. Tully is a student who frequently butts heads with other students and staff members, and is one of a small number of students being ‘held over’ at the school for the Christmas holidays. Finally, Mary is staying on to run the kitchen. Her son was a student at Barton and was enrolled into military service when they couldn’t afford college admission, and he was recently killed in Vietnam.

When the appointed holdover staff member comes up with a sick mother excuse, Paul is forced to take up the role as punishment for going against the wishes of the headmaster. Paul is unhappy about being charged with looking after half a dozen students, and imposes a strict study and exercise program despite it being Christmas and the weather turning cold. When one student’s parents agree they’d take all the holdover students on a skiing holiday if their parents consented, Tully’s parents can’t be reached and he’s suddenly left along with Paul and Mary.

It’s an awkward arrangement, with the three of them having very little in common, but as the barriers break down they all come to see each other as people and begin to speak truthfully to each other. As Tully begins to realise that Paul once had a different life and things happened to shape his world view, and that he’s been held back by some medical issues, he begins to open up about his own problems and try to help Paul improve his situation. You have to be feeling pretty comfortable with someone to tell them that they smell bad.

Much of the film is hinged on the performances, and this is certainly a highlight. The role of Paul Hunham must have been written with Giamatti in mind, director Payne having worked with him in Sideways, and he creates a character who is in parts sympathetic and detestable. He’s very set in his ways and it takes time for him to let his guard down, but he’s never not entertaining. Randolph is equally good as a woman struggling to find the strength to maintain a front while every part of his world has turned bleak.

For all the positives in this film, from the cinematography to the detailed art design and the performances, it didn’t quite manage to crack our hardened heart. From the beginning it feels formulaic, and strongly reminiscent of previous coming of age films such as Scent of a Woman. Whenever it shifts to a heartwarming tone, it feels trite and forced. You can’t shake the feeling that much of this was created to woo the Academy for some Oscars. Giamatti’s character, complete with a lazy eye, could almost be a parody of Oscar-bait roles from the 90s.

We don’t doubt that people will respond positively to The Holdovers, it certainly tells a nice story with some positive affirmations to round it out. For us, it felt like something we’d seen a couple of times already without a unique aspect to elevate it.

Rating: SEVEN out of TEN