As we meet Paul (Paul Giamatti) in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, he’s teaching ancient Greek and Roman civilization at a New England boarding school, a place where the very rich stashed their inconvenient sons in 1970. Paul appears to be grossly overqualified for his job and is an intellectual bully. Not only does Paul detest the entitled twits in his classes, he is a full-blown misanthrope who doesn’t engage with his adult peers, either.
Not one to curry favor, even with his boss, Paul is punished with the assignment of staying on campus during the Christmas break with a few students stranded by their parents. He is joined by Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who runs the school’s kitchen. Circumstances narrow his small band of student wards to one – Angus (Dominic Sessa) , a boy whose mother is concentrating her attentions on her new husband.
All three are emotionality wounded. Mary is grieving the loss of her only son, killed in Vietnam. Angus, having lost his father and not fitting in his mother’s new family, has essentially been orphaned. Much later, we learn that Paul wasn’t born to be the martinet that he has become; his personality and his self-isolation have also been formed by traumatic events.
So, a movie that starts out looking like a comedy of manners evolves into a three-track journey of emotional recovery, as each main character must learn how to navigate life beyond the losses they have suffered.
The acting is superb. As we expect in every performance, Giamatti is pitch perfect as a man much more complicated than he first seems. Yale-trained Broadway and West End actress Randolph is excellent here; (she also plays Mahalia Jackson at the March on Washington in Rustin.) Dominic Sessa is a revelation in his first movie appearance – charismatic, sly, canny and soulful as Angus. Carrie Preston really sparkles as one of Paul and Mary’s co-workers.
The Wife noted The Holdovers’ period verisimilitude, with every detail perfect for the 1970 setting. At Christmastime, Paul and Angus go to a famous movie; I checked, and it was released on December 23, 1970!
At first, I saw The Holdovers as a much smaller film than Payne’s masterpieces Sideways and Nebraska, but, the more I think about it, it’s uncommonly thoughtful and insightful. The Holdovers is in theaters and already streaming on Amazon.