Editor’s Note: Vanyaland film editor Nick Johnston is back in Canada all week covering the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. We wish we were up there with him! Check out our continuing coverage of TIFF 2023, read our official preview, and revisit our complete archives of prior editions.
I’ll skip the high-minded intro and get straight to the point: Alexander Payne’s work has never clicked with me. My peers have long beloved Payne, be it within the cinephile world or the chubby bearded person who listens to twee-ass-shit one (this Venn Diagram is almost – and I say almost – a circle), but every time I’ve sat down to enjoy one of his films, assured by every friend and writer that This Time Will Be Different, I’m inevitably left cold. Sometimes his movies suck, like Downsizing, which was so bad that it cast a pallor over an entire film festival’s closing night, and sometimes my particular tastes and sensibilities just don’t line up with his, like Election or Sideways or Citizen Ruth or The Descendants. The movies of his that are perfectly a-ok, like About Schmidt or Nebraska, are somewhere in the middle of the pack of things I’ve watched from their given years of release, with great performances given by fantastic actors who inevitably are let down by “God Made A Farmer” Midwestern horseshit. I understand that some people love Payne for his pet cliches, but his work is just particularly attuned to my disinterest or dislike in a way similar to that of meeting a perfectly lovely person whose face – a perfectly normal face, at that –drives you to some unknowable anger. This is a me problem, obviously. But I’m sure there are enough other people out there who feel similarly that it warranted mentioning, so I can surprise them in the second paragraph.
Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is a great movie. It’s easily the most entertaining film he’s ever made, his most through-and-through competent, and one of the best of this year. I’ll cop to rolling my eyes as the retro-styled Focus Features logo festooned with faux-celluloid scratches rolled at the film’s start, which made me fear that this was going to be another stylistic exercise much like Nebraska‘s greyscale, but that was the last time it happened. What lies beyond is the kind of movie that people have always said that Payne makes: A heartfelt and funny story of relationships, finding one’s self, etc. Trust me, I’ve spent the last week trying to understand precisely why I feel this way because, much like in my AGGRO DR1FT review, I wonder if I’m soon going to hit that period that so many other early Millenials/Late Gen-Xers hit where I suddenly start giving a shit about wine vintages or running or transcendental meditation or The National’s discography. At that point, you give up pick-up basketball games because of the sciatica, start complaining about how kids dress, and start to rue the day that you didn’t start saving up for that down payment before Jerome Powell and pals began jacking up the interest rates, despite not knowing what they were just three or four years earlier. In short, you have stared into the Boomer abyss, and your Andy Rooney-like self is staring back at you, complaining about bottled water.
Yet there’s enough here to separate The Holdovers from the rest of his filmography, all of which make a big difference. For one, it’s a period piece set in the early ’70s, which means that some of his stylistic choices, like that shameful scratched-celluloid overlay I initially complained about, work in the context. Second, it’s set in a new locale for him (although I understand that my perception of him being as associated with the Midwest as cheese, potatoes, and endless cornfields hasn’t been true for years at this point): A small New England town home to a private school that is the film’s nucleus. Third, Payne has rarely worked twice with any given member of his ensembles, which makes Paul Giamatti’s starring role here something of an aberration. Giamatti, who reached new levels of fame and recognition because of his work in Sideways, is better suited to a Payne protagonist’s needs than any other living performer. He’s got a venomous wit, a surly charm, and feels as if he just naturally emerged, fully formed, from one of Payne’s scripts. He’s one of the three “holdovers” of the film’s title, playing Paul, the teacher assigned to watch over students who, for whatever reason, can’t decamp to a ski lodge or a manor house during the two-week Christmas break. He’s a professor of classics, has a whole host of bizarre medical conditions, and is a hardass that would put any of his era-appropriate contemporaries to shame, believing whole-heartedly in the school’s values and mission – shaping the next generation of movers and shakers for their place in the world – because he was rescued by attending.
He’s not really a total bastard, though. After he excoriates his pupils for near-universally failing the midterm (and assigns them homework over break for daring to ask if they can be let out early), he heads to the cafeteria and greets Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) the one other faculty member he’ll spend Christmas with. To say the very least, she has had a rough year: her son, whose education was the reason she took this job in the first place, was recently killed in action in Vietnam, and though she looks stoic, putting up with ceremonial well-wishes from other faculty and students who will likely receive deferments for college, she’s able to reveal a little more of the hurt inside to Paul. They’re supposed to watch over five students for two weeks, but within a day or two, four depart, rescued by a wealthy parent’s helicopter to a lodge with plenty of beds and snow on the mountain. There was room for five in the chopper, but Paul couldn’t reach one set of parents on the phone. He breaks the news to Angus (Dominic Sessa), a bright but troubled kid. His mom has essentially abandoned him at school to cash in her rain-checked honeymoon with her second husband, and the memories of his father haunt him. Angus isn’t a bad kid: He’s got a bit of a mischievous streak and can act like a little bit of a brat, but he’s a teenager – them’s the breaks. So, they’re stuck out there during the “most wonderful time of the year,” with nothing else to do but interact with one another.
Being a person with a functioning brain and a knowledge of basic plot dynamics, you probably can suss out how The Holdovers will play. Friendship, healing, etc. – it’s true, Payne’s not re-writing the playbook. But he does execute it flawlessly, with a series of genuinely brilliant comedic escalations oriented around a set of moving dramatic reveals, all unfolding naturally. Of course, his three leads are pitch-perfect, and I’ve already spilled enough ink about how great Giamatti is, so I’ll spare you that. Randolph, who deserved a Best Supporting nod for her work in Dolemite is My Name, is fantastic here, with a dry wit to counter the dueling forms of hyperemotion embodied that she’s stuck with. Though the film is about the understanding that Paul and Angus come to, she’s not shunted off to the side, and the depths of her sorrow – as well as the slow-moving start to her healing process – are explored with uncommon empathy and sensitivity. Sessa is a revelation, slotting in the familiar role of “newcomer, non-actor or under-appreciated talent” that’s often a staple of a Payne ensemble, much as June Squibb, Hong Chau, or Shailene Woodley were in the past decade. This is his first film credit, and he spends the entirety of the movie punching at Giamatti’s weight. I’ll repeat: this is the first movie he’s ever been in, and he’s trading blows with an actor who is in a role so perfect for him that it was practically (and probably) named after him.
I think Payne had the right idea when, in trying to follow up Nebraska, which was the kind of out-and-out critical success that had typified his career since Election, he decided that he needed to get away from the wholly contemporary. His error in making Downsizing was going to the future, as the practical matter of world-building from imaginary assets proved not to be one of his strong suits. But the ’70s give him two assets here. First, his aesthetic is well-suited to the kind of story his paying homage to: It’s detailed and richly done, and his locations have a natural timelessness to them, even when the trio visits Boston at the end of the movie (and shout-out to the Somerville Theatre, which is cast as the Orpheum in this movie), accentuated by the era-appropriate detailing. Second, it frees him from the relevance trap. His movies have focused on contemporary issues in recent years – land and local Hawaiian politics, the collapse of small-town and rural life, and global warming – and removing the setting from the present allows him to explore concepts with the required amount of context. As such, these characters and this story are enriched with perspective, and their arcs feel more complete. Each development here is earned through the hard work of characterization and commitment, and it is genuinely lovely to watch unfold.
There’s a good likelihood that The Holdovers will eventually assume Oscar-villain status, especially if Barbie winds up on the nominee list because it is precisely the kind of movie geared to piss off a particular breed of cinema populist. It’s a throwback movie emerging into a hypermodern world, the rare film for adults – and all audiences because there’s nothing that objectionable for older kids – whose delights don’t require pages of analysis or excessive amounts of hype to generate enthusiasm. But it really doesn’t deserve that status (the old Kurt Vonnegut quote about “dressing up in a suit of armor to combat a hot fudge sundae” is apt for some of these films that find themselves, accidentally, in a horse race instead of an art museum), and I say this with plenty of experience in hating Alexander Payne movies and being frustrated with their near-universal acclaim. This is a new kind of movie from him, one that adds to his depth as a filmmaker and storyteller. It rope-a-dopes with its humor, and like Ali, it’ll knock you the fuck out with just how moving it is. So, I plead with you, Alexander Payne haters: As a former member of your outfit, give this one a shot. Everyone has said that to you before, but it is different. You might find yourself amazed.