‘The rich don’t give a shit. Poor kids are cannon fodder. Integrity is a punch line...’
As a supposed educator, I can say with some authority that teaching is tough. Just like most other jobs. I guess the difference is one bad day, one mistake… you can lose a kid forever that way. The Holdovers is another film in the teacher-student canon along with Good Will Hunting, Dead Poet’s Society and other films that don’t feature Robin Williams, but it’s also so much more than that…
Curmudgeonly teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is saddled with the responsibility of looking after a group of kids left at boarding school over the Christmas holidays. What begins with a group of five students is soon whittled down to one as only Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) is left behind with the school cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and Hunham making up an uneasy festive alliance.
The Holdovers, bizarrely released after Christmas in the UK, is not quite a full-blown Christmas film, to limit it as such would be to do it an injustice, but it does take everything that Christmas should be about and presents it in a way that is neither trite nor overly sentimental. The warmth of the film’s message is reflected in the wonderful set design and the astonishing use of colour. The warm yellows and deep, mahogany browns contrast with the stark whiteness of the snow and the sky to create a palette as comforting as a winter fire.
Director Alexander Payne, reuniting with Giamatti after the huge success of Sideways in 2004, uses his visual flair as a backdrop for a heartwarming, hilarious and poignant tale of loneliness, grief and growing up. Like all the best Springsteen songs, or coming-of-age movies such as Almost Famous and Stand By Me, The Holdovers is not afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve but it does so in a way that is relatable and never anything less than authentic.
This is an actors’ movie. Giamatti is wonderfully grouchy and suitably socially awkward and he shares an electric chemistry with Randolph and Sessa who are both excellent throughout. The former captures the resignation and innate sadness of a recently bereaved mother but it is Sessa as the lost, wayward student Tully who gives the most revelatory performance here. For a first-time actor to deliver a turn as magnetic and unforgettable as this is truly a sight to behold. Sessa channels his inner Holden Caulfield and even brings to mind early Tom Hanks’ early comedic roles with the sheer strength of his emotional gravitas and everyman charm – even when he’s being a dickhead. It is a performance that perfectly captures the swirling, tumultuous storm that is adolescence.
A quiet reflective film like this will always struggle to jostle for recognition alongside more bombastic films (and it will likely lose out to Oppenheimer in many of the categories in which it is nominated at this year’s Oscars) but this is a film that will endure. People will return to it because its message is universal and timeless. This is a warm hug of a movie. A film to remind us why we go to the movies in the first place. An instant classic.