The Holdovers is a Revelation – Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti at The Top of Their Game

by Sasha Stone

Some actors are loud about it. Or to quote a line from Alexander Payne’s splendid film, The Holdovers, they “dream a whole dream.” But some actors are so deep in it, so dedicated to the craft of acting they set about building a lifetime of small miracles. Sometimes we notice, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we take them for granted, like the great car that always runs or the store that is always open at the oddest hours. We don’t know how much we need them until they’re not there anymore.

I didn’t know how much I missed the collaborative voice of Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti until I saw The Holdovers. All at once, it brought me back to one of the films that has come to define much of my life, Sideways.

Back in 2004, I wasn’t much of a Sideways fan. I was too busy trying to get Martin Scorsese an Oscar, to quote a famous saying from back then. Scorsese didn’t win, but that wasn’t the worst thing about that year. It was the careless omission of Paul Giamatti in Sideways. He should have been nominated. He didn’t play the game, though, and thus, voters weren’t going to remember him if he wasn’t a blaring siren in front of their face.

It is a mark on the Academy’s record, to have missed such a brilliant, iconic performance as his. But lucky for them, there is a chance for a makegood with his performance in The Holdovers which, believe it or not, tops his work in Sideways.

Payne has found his muse in Giamatti who appears to be the living embodiment of Payne’s odd sense of humor and unique perspective on life. You’d have to be a Payne junkie to see what threads through all of his work. There is always the guy frozen inside himself, who can’t really break out of it. This is Warren Schmidt in About Schmidt. This is Woody Grant and his son in Nebraska. This is Matt King in The Descendants. This is Jim McAllister in Election.

But really, to me, Miles in Sideways and now Paul in The Holdovers are the purest form of the Payne muse. Both are teachers of high school boys. Both can be described as Walt Whitman might, they are vast. They contain multitudes. Yet their physical bodies are greatly limited.

The character of Paul is always quoting the works of great thinkers, writers and philosophers. Two of them are by Democritus. “World is decay, perspective is life,” and then, “Perfection of the soul puts right the faults of the body,” which defines the character of Paul Hunham even better.

That’s what we see in Payne’s work — he can show us the extraordinary soul inside the ordinary man. And he has found the perfect vessel for this creative expression in Giamatti, a master of the art and craft of acting.

The screenplay by David Hemingson (a name people only know of right this minute because of this film) is written like a novel. No character is given the short shrift and every word of this thing, every joke, every reference is well thought through such that it takes several viewings to catch every nuance.

The film takes place at a pivotal moment in American life. The year is 1970. The country is about to move through 1971, the height of the Vietnam protests. By 1972, Nixon would win in a landslide and America would change forever. This is a moment in between the old world of the 1960s and the transitional period of the 1970s before Conservativism swallows up the country in 1980.

Alexander Payne has said he believes that this specific year is important and relevant to today but he would not say why. I don’t know if he would agree with me or not but I see it as very much a similar time of transition. I see the Trump era very much like the Nixon era only somewhat in reverse. The power then was concentrated on the Right, and now it’s concentrated on the Left. But we were very much a divided country like we are now, with two Americas across the great divide.

That isn’t why The Holdovers is the film we need right now. It’s more about how a whole generation is crying out for guidance and leadership that has vanished all at once. In The Holdovers, Angus Tully (a brilliant debut by Dominic Sessa) is abandoned by his parents at Christmastime. Without their guidance he’s gone off the rails. It will take time and attention, but eventually he will find in Hunham a father figure that he lost, a leader and someone to give him what he needs right then, at this pivotal moment in his life to make the difference.

Sessa’s alternate path in life is tragically realized in the destiny of another boy, Curtis, the son of the school’s cook, Mary — played by the moving and hilarious Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Without college to give him a way out of war, Curtis is drafted and is killed in Vietnam. If Tully can’t pull his life together, that’s where he’s headed.

An unexpected luck of the draw allows Mary and Paul to provide just the right amount of love and understanding to rescue Tully from that terrible fate. And wouldn’t you know it, Tully rescues Paul right back.

“You can do this,” says Paul at the end. “So can you,” Tully replies.

When the two men finally head their separate ways, and we watch Paul drive off and into a whole life for a guy who never left Barton, we don’t see a guy who has to choose between living his dream and living his life. He can dream the whole dream.

The Holdovers is a film that, like Giamatti himself, takes its place in the pantheon as the best films this country has ever produced. No bells and whistles necessary. Just great writing, great acting, great directing. You might not realize by the end of it that the movie has left you with a bittersweet ache in your heart. Our lives are like a henhouse ladder — shitty and short — but if we step up when called upon, it will have been worth it.

What a gift Alexander Payne has given us with The Holdovers, bringing back Giamatti for the greatest role of his career and a character we’re not likely to forget any time soon.