Jonah Naplan   November 12, 2023

Among the best movies of this year, Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” is emotional without being cloying, funny instead of eccentric, and intelligent to a degree that we don’t often receive during this pathos-driven, Oscar-bait season. The characters are smart, the narrative is smarter, and the movie concludes on a note that makes you reflect upon the two hours you’ve just watched, connecting onscreen depictions to things you experience in your own life. Its minor shortcomings do not negate the movie’s overwhelming impact, and as screenwriter David Hemingson tugs increasingly tighter on the heartstrings as it nears its conclusion, “The Holdovers” journeys into ambitious territory that gives the audience a birds eye view of various people, in various guises, going through various stages of life, just trying to do it right after a tragedy defined their lives.

The film follows three troubled people who connect over the course of two weeks during the holidays at a New England boys boarding school called Barton Academy in the early 1970s. Paul Giamatti is the best he’s ever been as Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly instructor who teaches ancient civilizations to his suffering students, taking immense pride in issuing them failing grades on exams and other summative assessments. Among the better students in Hunham’s class is Angus Tully (a terrific Dominic Sessa in his debut role!), a rebellious 15-year-old who receives word that his mother and rich step-dad have decided to fly away on honeymoon, neglecting him for a place to stay over winter break. He ends up as a “holdover” amidst four other students, stuck at the school, of which the heat has been shut off, under the harsh supervision of Hunham, whose idea of an ideal holiday break is more studying and busy work, no different from what the pupils would attend to during a normal school week.

Also left behind is the academy’s beleaguered head cook named Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), a grieving mother whose son recently died in the Vietnam War. Through a series of events that lets the other students go elsewhere, it is these three that end up stuck together in the empty school, forced to get along and find common ground. The movie will proceed to connect them in ways that do fall subject to the occasional cliché, but nothing that can’t be eventually overshadowed by unconventional routes, all of which interrogate the relationship someone forms with another soul at the lowest point in their life.

Director Alexander Payne, who previously worked with Giamatti in his 2004 feature “Sideways,” crafts a unique atmosphere for his multifaceted picture. Working closely with Danish cinematographer Eigil Bryld, the movie, which bathes in many an aesthetic design choice, is fitted to look precisely as though it were made in the time period it takes place. Shot in 35 mm, each frame of “The Holdovers” crackles with vintage life, aged by time, and the dirt of its passage. The editing was done by Kevin Tent, who does a great job of stringing scenes together as though they were intricate pieces of fabric, sewing key moments, plot, character, and humor into a comfy quilt of a narrative.

It may help “The Holdovers” this Oscar season that it’s this warm and crowd-pleasing of a movie, but its many complex parts prove that it’s so much more than that. Almost like a thriller (though it really couldn’t be any farther from one), you assume “The Holdovers” is going a certain way, before subverting your expectations and following a completely different route. Some of these avenues you can foresee coming a mile away, but are performed in an unorthodox method that instills depth into what would normally be traditional plotlines. Others are new ideas entirely, that demonstrate character development, relationship growth, and innovative ways to pay off a joke or concept that was established in an earlier scene. Among other things, “The Holdovers” is a rapturous comedy that can even successfully pull off slapstick when necessary, a skill most studio comedies of the current era couldn’t dream of.

Watching the movie, I was reminded of such classics as “Dead Poets Society” and “The Breakfast Club,” both of which may have been primary influences, as well as the work of Aaron Sorkin, whose scripts have the same snappy rhythm as “The Holdovers.” But the screenplay wouldn’t have nearly as significant of an impact if it wasn’t anchored by such a strong trio of performers; Giamatti conveys all the right emotions at all the right times in a performance that should at least grant him a Best Actor nomination this spring—perhaps the most important power-player in this film whose character growth is detrimental to the events of the movie; Sessa has an enormously dynamic screen persona that seems to come so naturally, and will certainly make him a star in the next decade; and Randolph is hilarious when given a clever quip but also heart-wrenching when matched with an emotional beat.

The film details the trajectory of three people bouncing off each other endlessly, learning from their differences, and growing as human beings because of it. The result is moving but not sappy, finding just the right balance in between corny and heavy-handed. In a sense, you’ve seen this movie many times before; curmudgeonly old man evaluates where he finds himself at this point in his life through the eyes of someone much younger than he, ultimately cleansing himself of past sins and learning to be nicer to himself and others. But you may be surprised to find how much of this narrative you haven’t seen, and that’s what’s so special about it. Paul Hunham is not a grumpy guy, at least not externally, and he issues his oppression to his students with a smile as if plopping a donut on each of their desks. Perversely, his shifts in character are equally as quarrelsome, unconditional as they are, examining how one man can be so brutal, and yet so warm.

“The Holdovers” perfectly captures the fuzzy atmosphere of Christmas, even while peering at everyone else having so much fun, and wondering why we, too, can’t create similar memories. We get so drawn to the character of Angus, that we start walking and talking in his shoes, feeling just as trapped, confined to the same remedial spaces while everyone else gets to frolick in the dandelions. A story like this has been long overdue, especially one that has this much love for its characters, and emphasizes all their imperfections, talents, and personal insecurities. This is a dramedy that cares less about adhering to an algorithm, and more about filling out its frames with interesting people who we can all see a little bit of ourselves in. You may wonder why Payne chooses to explore themes of life’s unpredictability, sudden changes in status quo, pragmatism, and age with this particular facade, but those inquiries are emblematic of exactly what “The Holdovers” represents in 2023: maturity, boredom, isolation, and all of life’s love and laughter.

Now playing in theaters.