In a later scene in Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” classics teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) takes one of his students, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), to Boston on an impromptu field trip during winter break. The pair make a stop at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, much to Angus’s chagrin. He’s noticeably bored as they walk through rows of glass-encased ancient pottery, not really understanding the point of all this culture. That is, until Mr. Hunham points out quite the pornographic image on one of the pots.
“There is nothing new in human experience,” Mr. Hunham says. If these pots are anything to go by, these ancient peoples were not that much different from us. If we try to understand them, perhaps we can understand ourselves a little better. And if there’s porn involved, all the better.
This is the balance that “The Holdovers” aims to strike, poignant with a well of sly, boorish humor thrown in for good measure. Shot beautifully by cinematographer Eigil Bryld, the film is not only set in the 1970s but feels like it could have been made back then, from its earthy textured look to its flawed protagonists. It’s a sentimental film, sometimes overreaching the boundary of that feeling. “The Holdovers” works best when Payne and writer David Hemingson wrap that sentiment up with hurt, anger and wit, leaning into the idea that despite the walls between these troubled characters, they’re not so different after all.
“The Holdovers” feels a lot like a more cantankerous (but in a lot of ways equally as softhearted) version of Peter Weir’s “Dead Poets Society.” Much like Robin Williams’s John Keating, Paul Hunham attended the boarding school he now works for, and has grand aspirations of bettering the next generation. Unlike John Keating, Paul Hunham finds his students to be “vulgar, rancid little philistines” who probably aren’t worth the trouble.
Unfortunately for Paul, he’s tasked with staying at Barton Academy over winter break to keep watch over the rancid little demons who have nowhere else to go. The holdovers, if you will. One of those students is Angus, a smart (if unenthused and angry) young man whose mother and stepfather abandoned him at the last minute to jet away on a late honeymoon. Angus joins a group of four others, and for a while it feels like this might be our movie – a group of boys from different walks of life learning to get along. But soon enough, all the boys except for Angus end up jetting off on adventures of their own, leaving him alone with Mr. Hunham and the school’s cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).
At its core, “The Holdovers” is one of the oldest stories in the book, the journey of learning that no matter how alone you feel, you are not the only person who has ever felt this way. An undercurrent of grief runs through the lives of our three main characters. For Paul, that grief is a wound that’s festered for decades, manifesting as resentment and irritation. For Angus – who recently lost his father – the grief is still fresh, running hot and angry. That anger is reflected in the camera when it focuses on Angus, propulsive when he finds himself in more explosive moments. Grief is fresh for Mary too, who just lost her son in Vietnam. But Mary is older than Angus, and not so keen to let that anger overtake her as easily as it does him.
The three experience grief differently, but they can only really face it when they accept help from one another. Humor is often used as a way to begin finding that common ground, particularly for Angus and Paul. In a pretty fantastic Christmas party sequence, both men attempt to flirt (poorly) with different women – if these flirting tactics are anything to go by, they truly aren’t so different from one another. But while Angus’s interaction is laced with awkward teenage sweetness and ends in a kiss, Paul has a genuine moment with a woman before having the heartbreaking realization that she’s completely unavailable. There are a few moments in “The Holdovers” where it dips over that tight line of sweet and salty, becoming something a bit too overwrought. But it’s in these moments where the film finds its footing with just the right balance of wit and melancholy.
“The Holdovers” is a familiar story, and the type of story that thrives on well-written characters and great performers. Giamatti and Sessa (in his first movie role) have excellent chemistry, but Randolph holds the center of the film. When Mary is first introduced, I had a short-lived fear that she might only serve as a foil to Paul, a voice solely there to tell him to try and be a little kinder to Angus with not much inner life of her own. While she does fall firmly into the category of a supporting character, the character moments that she does get are as rich as ever.
At that same Christmas party (the one with the terrible flirting), Mary finally breaks down over the death of her son. Randolph’s interpretation of that outpouring of sorrow is achingly familiar. When someone tries to offer Mary some physical comfort, she lashes out. It’s almost like her body can’t take the thought of being that close to someone, physically embodying that feeling when you’re so overcome with pain that any small kindness makes you feel like an open wound.
There are a few smaller moments like that throughout the film, where someone’s touch makes Mary recoil slightly. But then, towards the story’s end, she finds Angus sitting alone, wallowing in his own sadness. She sits beside him, and allows him to take her hand. A wall has been broken.