Roughly every 20 years there comes a film about an unlikely friendship between a precocious yet misanthropic young person and a curmudgeonly, world-weary elder. Throw in the aesthetic of a New England winter in the ’70s—corduroy, tweed, crested blazers and acoustic ballads—and you have the formula for my coming-of-age kryptonite: Harold and Maude, Rushmore, and now The Holdovers.
The latest film from Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways) is a movie made out of time. From the (albeit digital) film grain against a snow-covered prep-school campus, to the extended, simplistic opening credits, not only does The Holdovers take place in 1970, it looks and feels like it was made then, too. The coziness draws you in and settles on history teacher Mr. Hunham (Giamatti) smoking a pipe and grading papers, and is unceremoniously broken by his first line: “Philistines. Lazy, vulgar, rancid little Philistines.”
Mr. Hunham is a prickly man, justifying his cantankerous demeanor as a taste-of-the-real-world for the entitled “reprobates” he teaches at Barton boarding school. He’s hated by his students and the faculty alike; they’ve given him the nickname Walleye. It is for this reason, and that he once failed a future U.S. senator (“That boy is too dumb to pour piss out of a boot. A genuine troglodyte!”), that he is punished with the responsibility of watching over the five students who are unable to leave campus for Christmas break.
No less amused with their situation are the students stuck with Walleye. One student, the too-smart-for-his-own-good Angus Tully (Sessa), is particularly peeved by the last-minute phone call from his mother telling him he can’t come home after all. With them is Miss Lamb (Randolph), the school cook whose son went to Barton but recently died in Vietnam.
It’s this core trio that makes for an unlikely family during a time when they have none, and need it the most. It is both hilarious and heartwarming, though less clichéd than that makes it sound. Rather, it is a story that shares and builds on timeless tropes. Whereas Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules comforts his charges with, “Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England,” Giamatti awakens his boys by banging bedpans together and berating them with the new classic, “Alright you fetid layabouts, it’s daylight in the swamp! Arise!”
The script by writer/producer David Hemingson is sharp, witty, and layered. But it is the actors who truly bring these characters to life. Giamatti being good is just a reminder that shilling for Verizon hasn’t diminished his talent. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is likewise brilliant, and the keel that keeps the ship from tipping in the well-trod waters of “trouble in prep-school paradise.” And Dominic Sessa gives a star-making performance, with shades of Jason Schwartzman’s breakout role of Max Fischer.
Time will tell, but it feels like Alexander Payne has made a new Christmas classic for the curmudgeon in all of us. Even the tagline is perfect: Discomfort and Joy.
