Worth: $19.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Carrie Preston
Intro:
… you leave the theatre with a renewed sense of what it really means to be human.
Life is messy, contradictory and often depressing, but it takes a filmmaker of rare skill to capture all that without falling into incoherence or smoothing things out by oversimplifying. Thank goodness for Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska).
Very few contemporary American directors can claim a body of work such as his, with films that make us laugh and cry, often in quick succession. Above all, he shows us people’s foibles in a way that endears us to his characters, and which make you leave the theatre with a renewed sense of what it really means to be human.
The premise of The Holdovers is simple. It is set in an indomitably elite American boys’ school entrusted with the weight of tradition, its imposing buildings now encircled by Boston winter snow as Christmas approaches. Most of the boys and masters are heading home, but a few unfortunate ones have parents who are either absent or too rich to care. The kids who have to stay at the school over Christmas are referred to as ‘holdovers’. No teacher wants to be the one to babysit them. However, Paul Hunham (the utterly wonderful Paul Giamatti) – the Ancient Civilisations teacher – is singled out for this tiresome task by his hostile head teacher.
Paul is a world class curmudgeon and Christmas is his opportunity to out-Scrooge Scrooge. His distaste for cant and his general tendency to embrace failure and disappointment in advance means that he approaches the task with a reluctant certainty. As he tells one of the boys, he finds the world a bitter and complicated place and he thinks that it mostly returns the favour. Also staying on at the school is the cook and general assistant Mary – great support from Da’Vine Joy Randolph. She does not stand for any self-pity or unnecessary cruelty, and she tells it like it is. She too is marked in other ways, not least by a life-affecting grief. One of the senior boys who is furious about being held over is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa). Angus is bright but he has never been able to drop his defensive arrogance and he more or less hates all teachers. The film follows the evolving relationship between Paul, Mary and Angus over the course of the two weeks around Christmas.
The film doesn’t appear to be doing much and you might dismiss it as lacking action or drama. It also takes its time. After all, no one is going anywhere till the break is over. However, the script by David Hemingson is so pitch-perfect and the performances so finely judged that there are almost-infinite riches to be gained from just letting the film get through to you. People who know Payne’s work will obviously want to catch it. For those who haven’t got on to him yet, this film is bound to make them converts.
