Pan and Slam

The Holdovers

R 2h 13m

• Director
  • Alexander Payne
• Writer
  • David Hemingson
• Stars
  • Paul Giamatti
  • Da’Vine Joy Randolph
  • Dominic Sessa

By Jason Koenigsberg

Back in 2004 hard working character actor Paul GIamatti was the lead role in director Alexander Payne’s critically acclaimed awards darling Sideways, one of the best movies of its era. It won Payne a Writing Oscar yet to everyone’s dismay Paul Giamatti was overlooked for a Best Actor Academy Award nomination. This did little to hurt his career, if anything him being ‘robbed’ may have boosted his profile and he has continued to turn in great lead and supporting performances ever since. Now, two decades later the director and actor reunite this time for The Holdovers. A movie about lonely, sad misfits who are forced to be together over the holidays and form an unlikely bond as a makeshift family. This type of story has been told ad nauseam but with Alexander Payne at the helm, and this talented cast turning in superb performances The Holdovers is a very special picture that manages to surprise us and make us empathetic for these characters. Audiences will laugh out loud with the dialogue and their situations, and The Holdovers will probably become a holiday movie staple. It is easily one of the best movies of 2023 and the duo of Payne and Giamatti deserve awards attention once again.

The Holdovers opens up with old fashioned logos for Focus Features and Miramax. The first shot is a boys choir singing and receiving advice from their instructor in front of a Christmas tree. The opening credits style and the cinematography throughout The Holdovers gives the movie a vintage and nostalgic feel. It takes place during the 1970 holiday season at a Christian Boys boarding school in New England. The camerawork and soft lit photography really transport the audience where you can feel the snow crunching on the ground as the characters walk around campus and later Boston during a chilly winter over fifty years ago with the costumes, sets, and automobiles. This feels like it could have been made in 1970.

The story involves Paul Giamatti as an old school curmudgeon. He is a hard nosed teacher at a prestigious prep school with high demands for his students and verges on abusing his power as their teacher with being a very strict grader on exams and essays. Giamatti of course rises to the occasion and is perfect as the Ebenezer Scrooge figure in this narrative. He is chosen to stay and watch the students who cannot go home for the holidays. This is done mostly as punishment for not playing politics and passing a powerful donors son keeping that boy from getting into an Ivy League school. While there he is forced to stay with the cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who chose to stay since she recently lost her son in Vietnam and this will be her first Christmas without him. She is not ready to move on and see her family. They both stay as well as five students. Four of the five students get permission from their parents to leave the isolated campus for an opportunity to go skiing until the new semester begins in January. One boy, played by newcomer Dominic Sessa, could not get in touch with his parents since they are on their Honeymoon in St. Kitts. We already saw a phone conversation that they did not want him to go with them so he was rightfully angered by that. Now he has to be further punished by being forced to be the only student ‘holdover’ at the school during the entire winter break.

Of course the troubled teenager and grumpy professor form a bond. He teaches the student life lessons, learns unexpected life lessons from the boy, and they both learn from and aid the grieving chef during a difficult time after the loss of her son. This may all sound like The Holdovers is nothing but a bunch of cliches that we have seen thousands of times. On the surface it is, but the script is so wrought with humor and heartache and the performances are so top notch that everything that could feel redundant about The Holdovers instead feels exciting, hilarious, and refreshing. Alexander Payne’s best movies are humanistic comedies, often referred to as ‘dramedies’ because the dramatic moments hit just as hard as the comical ones. The Holdovers he once again perfectly balances the humor and the deep emotional tragic parts effortlessly that with all of the right elements in place, the audience is transported and forgets about the cliches and are invested in these characters. During the course of the movie the viewer will start to love these characters despite their flaws, we want to see them succeed and find happiness.

The Holdovers is a great intellectual comedy dealing with sad people touched by tragic events that haunt their lives. It is about how the Vietnam war destroyed the holiday season for a lot of American families. It is about how the selfishness of our parents forces us to put on a tough exterior shell and lie, and about how other people’s lies have altered our future and set us on a different path in life. The viewer will empathize with these characters loneliness and heartbreak. These main characters all feel rejected and alone and for their own personal reasons are afraid to reach out and accept new friends, new romances, or new experiences. Even the hardest people deep down inside do not want to be alone during the holidays. Everyone longs for someone to be with and The Holdovers will make you want to hug your loved ones a little bit tighter and be thankful you have them and are not stuck at an isolated prep school during the holiday season.