The Holdovers - Review

Rating: 5 out of 5

THE partnership between writer-director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti has already delivered one all-time classic in Sideways (which continues to age well). It repeats the trick with The Holdovers, another bittersweet gem.

The film serves as both a melancholy lament for life's 'what could have beens' as well as a hopeful nod to finding family and a sense of belonging in unexpected places. In doing so, it also exmaines social and class divides, prejudice and the notion of what defines success - as in expectation versus reality. It's also an achingly poignant examination of loss.

If this sounds vaguely depressing, then it isn't. Payne may deliver some heart-wrenching moments (guaranteed to give those tear ducts a workout), yet his script is also sharp, witty and incisive, while his cast are warm and endearing when they need to be - all delivering barnstorming performances to match the brilliance of the material.

Set in the early 70s, and adopting a visual aesthetic befitting films of that era (right down to the opening credits), Payne's film also opens up a window into the present, showing where things have changed (and progress has been made) and, perhaps more tellingly, where it hasn't.

There's so much wisdom in a scene where Giamatti's teacher reveals: "There's nothing new in human experience, Mr. Tully. Each generation thinks it invented debauchery or suffering or rebellion, but man's every impulse and appetite from the disgusting to the sublime is on display right here all around you. So, before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember, if you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past. You see, history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present."

In this moment alone, the film encapsulates a modern era in which the divides between rich and poor, success and perceived failure, have widened.

The story essentially follows three main characters - cantankerous teacher Paul Hunham (Giamatti), bright but troubled student, Angus (Dominic Sessa) and school head cook Mary (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) - as they are forced to spend Christmas together at an otherwise empty elite academy in New England. Paul has been forced to do so by his peers, to look after the so-called 'holdovers', while Angus has been 'abandoned' by his mum and her new husband, so that they can spend more time together.

For Mary, the academy has become a sort of home - the place where she sought employment to give her son a shot at a better education, but who has since come to grieve his passing on the battlefields of Vietnam.

There is hurt behind every character's journey. But what makes Payne's film stand out so much is the way in which the depths of the emotions are tapped in such a beautiful and subtle fashion. There is no grandstanding, no audience baiting and no feeling of contrivance.

Getting to know Paul, for instance, is a masterclass in performance cinema from Giamatti. At first glance, he's conceited, arrogant, loathing of his students and unpopular. Yet, there are reasons - and learning them is part of the joy of watching. Giamatti is such a skilled performer that he engratiates himself with invisible ease. A sharp put-down will evoke a wry smile, yet it's indicative of the mask he has created for himself. At another moment, he will offer a glimpse of the pain that really exists beneath the sharpened exterior.

Elsewhere, a look or a grimace will show how another disappointment feeds into a lifetime of them - the fine line that exists between happiness and loneliness, or a high flying career and just getting by.

In Mary, meanwhile, Randolph expertly imbues her character with a fierce dignity that protects her from the painful realities of her life - the fact that, as a black cook in a school filled with white privilege, she is looked down upon. And, most pertinently, the grief and despair that she feels at the loss of her son, as well as the cruelty of the circumstances that took him from her.

Her big moment isn't the one where she loses that calm, momentarily, at a party; but rather when she carefully folds her former baby's clothes into the drawer of her pregnant sister's bedroom, holding back the tears. It's a quiet moment of immense power that is incredibly heart-breaking.

And let's not forget Sessa's Angus - outwardly abrasive and somewhat privileged, yet masking his own despair at the loss of a father who had once been a guiding light and an inspiration. The truth behind Angus' rage and 'troubles' is also devastating, giving rise to some similarly heart-wrenching moments between him and Giamatti late on.

It's what these three characters have in common that unites them, which makes what they come to mean to each other so profound and so beautiful. The sentiment on display is earned, not milked. And even then, there's none of the schmaltz associated with more traditional Christmas-based films - more a bracing sense of the real.

Hence, wile The Holdovers may provoke certain comparisons with the likes of Dead Poets' Society and, to a lesser extent, Scent of a Woman (to name but two), it has its own sense of identity and a great deal to say about the vagaries of life, in all of its rich and often unfair complexity. It is a masterpiece.