Alexander Payne seems to be in an unintentional rivalry with Wes Anderson on who can make the most quirky movies about the most unrealistic people stuck in the truly realistic settings. Payne seems a little more hardcore than Anderson, willing to go the extra mile to be more outrageous to tell a story. He doesn’t take himself as seriously as Anderson does in his movies unlike Anderson, he’s more focused on the story than he is the style.
I basically gave up on Anderson after The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. After that, he’s made the same movie over and over. I still don’t see what was good about The Grand Budapest Hotel except for Anderson’s attempt to make a more violent movie. Payne burst on the scenes in the mid-1990s with Citizen Ruth, a satirical movie that didn’t take a stand on the abortion issue and gave Laura Dern a wonderful performance as pure Midwestern White Trash.
Then, he made Election, a brilliant high school angst comedy that also cut through the true nature of American politics. Most of it is about spite and even some politicians act like children themselves. It also showed the cold-blood truth that some teachers and educators just don’t like some of their students. It was savage. And it gave Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick some of the best performances of their careers.
Payne even gave Jack Nicholson a wonderful performance later in his career in About Schmidt to break away from the “Jack” persona that has been around for years. But Sideways was the movie that made him a major player, becoming a surprise hit off a small budget and picking up multiple Oscar nominations and a win for Best Adapted Screenplay along with frequent collaborator Jim Taylor.
Then, there was the Oscar-winning The Descendants, where George Clooney plays a Hawaiian lawyer dealing with grief over the impending death of a wife who had an affair while his relatives want him to sell land that will make them a fortune. Like Nicholson, it gave Clooney a chance to play someone who isn’t the suave Cary Grant persona he’s shown in movies like Out of Sight or Ocean’s Eleven.
I never saw Nebraska but Downsizing was a letdown, a good idea that never really hit the right buttons it should’ve. So, his latest movie The Holdovers is the first movie since Nebraska where he’s just a director, not a writer or producer. Some directors do their best work when they can take on a script that’s totally new to them. On the surface, you feel like you’ve seen this movie before (A Separate Peace, Scent of a Woman, Dead Poets Society), but there’s an edge to it that Payne and writer David Hemingson keep from being “Rich Preppy Kids Have Problems Too” plot.
Set around Christmastime in 1970 at the fictional Barton Academy in New England, it focuses on the unfortunate students (and staff) who find themselves having to stay at the school over the break. One of the students is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), who finds himself suddenly left at Barton when his mother lets him know at the last minute she and her new husband are going to go on their long-delayed honeymoon in the tropics, much to his anger. Angus is one of those students who isn’t really liked but not exactly hated by the other peers.
And the educator who has to supervise them is Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti who was also in Sideways), who teaches history. Like Angus, he’s not too well liked at the school for his reluctance to give passing grades to students whose parents give the school big endowments. He basically fails most of the history class Angus is in, but gives them the option of a make-up exam after winter break. He’s mocked for his wall-eyes by both students and faculty.
Paul is unprepared to supervise and thus imposes classwork and chores as well as physical activity on the five students, but they are limited in the places on campus they can go to. This means they have to be moved to the infirmary to sleep and can’t use the gymnasium. Eventually, one of the students’ father flies in on a helicopter and takes everyone but Angus on family skiing trip. Angus can’t get in touch with his mother and neither can Paul.
So, that just leaves the teacher and student there with the school’s cook, Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who is bereaving the loss of her son, who was killed in action in Vietnam. Her son went to Barton but since he was a black student enrolled just because his mother was an employee, he didn’t have the best offers to colleges. With no student deferment, he was drafted.
While there are other black students shown at Barton, as well as a Korean student who’s confused with being both Japanese and Chinese, it’s obvious there’s racism at the school. But Payne and Hemingson don’t hammer it home. Mary mentions her son couldn’t get the financial aid he needs which even at the time wasn’t much. But since he was black and had a parent who was just a cook, he didn’t have the clout to go to the bigger schools. Affirmative Action was still only benefitting white women at the time.
Randolph gives a wonderful performance and becomes the motherly figure Angus needs during this time. Sessa, himself, is a wonderful stand-out. This is his first movie and he attended Deerfield Academy, one of the filming locations for Barton, and was active in the school’s theater program. Even though he’s a little older than the character he’s supposed to be playing, Sessa makes Angus very relatable to anyone and everyone who’s gone through the same thing he has. His mother (Gillian Vigman) has remarried to his stepfather (Tate Donovan) who’s obviously richer and has more prestige. And I’m almost certain sending Angus to boarding school is the stepfather’s idea so he can have a wife but no child responsibilities. Even if the movie was made in present time, I’m sure Angus’ mother and stepfather would remain unreachable by their cell phones.
What has happened to Angus’ father I won’t mention because it shows just how talented Sessa is as well as how wonderful Giamatti is in this role. Since bursting on the scene in 1997 in Private Parts, he has become one of those actors who can take control of every role he’s given and make it great. However, I felt his role as John Adams was better when his character wasn’t griping so much. But his snub for a Best Actor nomination for Sideways remains one of the biggest times the Oscars got it wrong.
A middle-aged bachelor, he attended Barton and has been teaching there from his early 20s, even teaching the current headmaster, who doesn’t like him and the feeling is mutual. There’s a hint that an administrative assistant, Lydia Crane (Carrie Preston), likes him as she invites him to her annual Christmas Eve party but he’s discovers a hard truth.
And that’s the realities of Payne’s movies that keep them from becoming Anderson’s lighter movies. Sometimes, things just don’t work out the way you thought they would. Witherspoon’s character thinks being student government president will work out best in Election, but it really doesn’t because no one cares who the student government president is. Nicholson’s character can’t bring himself to really say what he thinks of Dermot Mulrooney’s character and his family in About Schmidt so he lies instead of ruining his daughter’s wedding, which is what a lot of us would do. Clooney’s character doesn’t sell the land which will make him and everyone rich, even though it angers his family, but he knows it’s the right thing to do for the people of Hawai’i. And he has to come to terms with his wife’s death and the infidelity she had prior to her coma.
The Holdovers in the title are the people who don’t get the big invites to ski resorts or tropical locations. With social media now more popular than ever and people posting extravagant pics of themselves and their family around the holidays, it can be relatable. After Christmas break ends, they go back to do the same thing they’ve always been doing like nothing happened. While the ending goes exactly the way you’d suspect once you see Angus’ mother and stepfather finally arrive, it makes him even more sympathetic to see how awful they are. And you care more about what Paul and Mary attempted to do to have a better Christmas.
The holidays can be a rough time on a lot of people, especially when people feel like they’ve been rejected. Just because they don’t have immediate family, people expect Paul and Mary to stay and work. It sounds like the way they treat people now in the workplace. The Holdovers is about the people who don’t get the Norman Rockwell like Christmas but are still great people despite their flaws.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 