Nearly 20 years after Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti teamed up for “Sideways,” which resulted in perhaps Payne’s best film and Giamatti’s finest screen performance, they’re reunited for the wintry character study “The Holdovers,” with Giamatti once again turning in masterful work as a hard-tippling misanthrope who is well aware he’s usually the least popular person in any room he occupies and isn’t necessarily concerned with making the changes necessary to alter such perceptions.
Although at times overly talky, “The Holdovers’ on balance is a charming and smart comedy/drama that is set in 1970 and actually looks like it was made in 1970, from the scratchy opening titles through the grainy-looking visuals, which were achieved through a combination of old school lenses and digital post-production magic. Hal Ashby (“Harold and Maude,” “The Last Detail”) would have been proud.
Giamatti’s Paul Hunham is a longtime professor of ancient history at Barton Academy, a New England prep school where he is despised by students and faculty alike. Director Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson (who has a keen ear for dialogue) have saddled Paul with a trick bag of ailments and problems, including hemorrhoids, a distrusting nature, a heavy dependency on whiskey and tobacco, Amblyopia aka lazy eye, and a rare genetic condition known as trimethylaminuria, which is also called Fish Odor Syndrome because it causes people to emit the odor of rotting fish in their urine, sweat and breath. Geez, no wonder this guy is such an ass- - - - whose only pleasure in life seems to be failing his students, whom he refers to as “troglodytes,” “reprobates,” “fetid layabouts” and “degenerates,” among other choice terms.
With stellar needle drops by the Chambers Brothers, Badfinger, Cat Stevens and some holiday classics setting the tone, the vast majority of students, faculty and administrators at Barton are happily fleeing town for the two-week holiday break — but Paul has been tasked with acting as glorified babysitter for the handful of boys who have no place to go, for a variety of reasons. As fortune and screenplay contrivance would have it, most of the remaining students are whisked via helicopter for a ski weekend by a kid’s wealthy father, leaving Paul to look after just one student: Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a smart but troubled teenager who is Paul’s best student but has proved to be his own worst enemy in getting kicked out of a series of tony schools.
Also staying behind is the school’s cafeteria manager, Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who has chosen to remain because this is the last place she saw her son, a student at Barton before he was shipped off to Vietnam and killed in action. (From time to time we also see Naheem Garcia’s Danny, the janitor, who clearly has feelings for Mary.)
This is one Unhappy Trinity. Angus is bitter and angry about his mother and new stepfather leaving him behind while they enjoy a delayed honeymoon in Saint Kitts, while he’s stuck in the cold and empty school with a teacher he hates. Paul is miserable because that’s his default mode, while Mary has yet to truly process her grief. (On a handful of occasions, we’re reminded of the class and race differences that led to Mary’s son going to Vietnam, while the privileged white students at Barton have little fear of the draft. The social commentary is pointed but not heavy-handed.)
For a while, “The Holdovers” is stuck in place at Barton, with Paul thawing just a little bit, Angus acting out, and Mary explaining the premise of “The Newlywed Game” to Paul, who of course never watches TV and finds the show fascinating. Just when we’re getting a little restless with the situation, the action moves elsewhere — first to a bar where the trouble-seeking Angus almost gets beaten up by a couple of Vietnam veterans, then to a party hosted by a kindly Barton administrator (Carrie Preston) and finally to Boston, after Paul reluctantly agrees to a field trip that will entail both Mary and Angus visiting relatives, and Paul having to confront his past.
Through the plot is relatively thin and familiar and contains only a sprinkling of surprises, “The Holdovers” feels very much of its time and place, from the cigarette smoke to the vinyl records to the talk of Miller being “The Champagne of Beers” to the aforementioned Christmas party where the kids have been relegated to what we used to call a “finished basement” while the grown-ups upstairs smoke and dance and get tipsy.
Giamatti is his usual brilliant self, gradually allowing us to see the tributaries of humanity still running deep inside Paul. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is equally impressive in creating a layered and nuanced character. Newcomer Dominic Sessa, who has never appeared in even a short film before, demonstrates a raw and real talent reminiscent of a young Dustin Hoffman or Richard Dreyfuss. “The Holdovers” is a richly satisfying film that ends on just the right note.
