The Holdovers: Giamatti's Grinch of a Teacher Gets the Best Lines in a Tale of Three Sad Souls
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B-plus
The last two Toronto International Film Festivals in a row ended, for me, with a period-piece tale, fronted by a consummate actor who warmed my jaded heart.
Last year it was the movie Living, which earned Bill Nighy an Oscar nom. This year, it was The Holdovers, which, in a just world, will do the same for Paul Giamatti.
Alexander Payne’s Christmas-set tale of lonely souls is spiced with Giamatti’s performance as Paul Hunham, an acerbically bitter history teacher in an elite early ‘70s boys prep school, an institution that’s both a training ground for tomorrow’s privileged society weasels, and a refuge from the Vietnam War draft.
Dominic Sessa, Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph are forced to make merry in The Holdovers.
Add a bit of road movie misadventure, a la Payne’s Sideways, and you have a Christmas movie with spirit and wit, with a minimum of mawkish sentiment.
The movie opens with a full house, a class of students bored as they wait for the final bell that calls them to their pampered homes for the break, and insolent towards their tweedy, often drunk and apparently smelly teacher.
For Hunham, it’s a chance to toss a metaphorical grenade at his teen charges, whom he refers to as “vulgar little Philistines,” by peppering them with Ds and Fs, forcing them to study over the holidays for a make-up exam.
Teddy Kountze (Brady Hepner): “I can’t fail this class!”
Hunham: “Oh, don’t sell yourself short, young Mr. Kountze. I believe that you most certainly can.”
It’s a hollow victory for the school’s least-liked teacher when he discovers he’s to remain on campus to mind any “holdovers,” students who aren’t able to go home for the holidays. There is but one of these, a chronic offender named Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), whose mother’s unwillingness to take him back, even for two weeks, suggests rejection that motivates his rebellious attitude.
Rounding out a trio of sad sacks is the head cook Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), a bereaved Black woman whose son, recently killed in ‘Nam, did not enjoy the protection handed out to the sons of the white upper class.
Hunham and Mary have whisky for solace. Tully has weed. But cabin fever eventually leads them to a rule-breaking trip to Boston, each with their own agenda.
The Holdovers is episodic in this way, making a hard turn every so often from the movie you think you’re watching. The destination is a point of mutual understanding and redemption. But this is not a movie that guarantees a happy ending, at least not in the conventional sense.
As you might guess, Giamatti gets the best and funniest lines. But Randolph’s grief, anger and sarcasm, combined with Sessa’s touching loose-cannon performance, turns the trio of misanthropes into a team – for one shining moment, anyway.
The Holdovers is a modest gem, in keeping with Payne’s penchant for making damaged people believable and relatable.
Who knows? It might even achieve the status of minor Christmas classic.
The Holdovers. Directed by Alexander Payne. Starring Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa and Da'Vine Joy Randolph. Opens in theatres Friday, November 3.