Satisfyingly clichéd

I'm an Alexander Payne fan. Ever since Election, I've made sure to see everything that he's directed because there's something about his pacing and storytelling rhythm that simply sings to me. It's a comforting thing when you can begin watching a film and instantly know that it's a particular director's work. I've had that feeling with people from Christopher Nolan to John Carpenter and Payne is no exception to that. In that respect, even if I hadn't known that The Holdovers was his latest release, I would've been able to tell you that it was about five minutes into seeing the interchanges between irascible history teacher, Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), and student, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) along with the lighting, the camera angles, and the slow pans through the early 70s New England winter. All of that said, it's fair to say that the film doesn't really show anything new or exciting that deviates from that style and it's an open question as to whether it benefits or suffers from that.

Now, as Story Guy™, I'm usually the first one to criticize someone presenting a story that's immediately predictable or just a retread of others that we've seen before. By the same token, what I'm asking for more often than not isn't necessarily something new, but instead something good and The Holdovers does not fail in that respect. The embittered teacher who thought he'd achieve something more is no more new than the mother grieving for her lost son or the kid whose parents shipped him off to boarding school to get him out of their lives (How well do I know that story...) But the combination here is familiar enough to accept, but also written and performed well enough to hold the attention. It was probably even more entrancing for me than most of the rest of the audience because I attended a school a lot like the fictional Burton Academy for a couple years when my parents shipped me off there, ostensibly to get a better education, but mostly to just get me out. Giamatti's character speaks to that when he bemoans the fact that most of the students he has are unprepared for both the material he's teaching and the style with which he does it. And, just like my own experience, by far the most congenial character is Mary (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), the head cook in the school's kitchen, as adrift from human companionship as either of the other two leads and, like them, forced to put up with what she can get.

Interestingly, the concept for the film was initially Payne's but he decided to hand it off to writer, David Hemingson, after deciding that the TV pilot he originally had in mind didn't have enough to carry it. I think he was correct in that respect, in that the film's plot is comfortably familiar, but probably so much so that a TV series would have become repetitive quite soon and dwindled off into indifference. Hemingson's script is matched perfectly with Payne's approach and is easily among the highlights of the film. I think Randolph's line: "Don't fuck it up for the little asshole!" is among my favorites that I've heard uttered this year. But you have to give a nod to the performances, from the star in Giamatti to the veteran in Randolph to the newcomer in Sessa, who was not only in his first credit of any kind but was also attending one of the locations used to shoot the film (Deerfield Academy) just over a year ago. Giamatti carries a role much like he did in his previous collaboration with Payne (Sideways), but remains as magnetic a presence as ever, even in the cloak of the familiar. Sessa, on the other hand, switches nicely from the perpetually bored and insouciant teenager to the wounded child, longing for his father, and back again. Randolph, meanwhile, is the most consistently moving of them all and with the deepest well of emotion in most of her scenes.

And all of those positives have to be the shining stars in this firmament because, again, the story is nothing innovative and is entirely predictable from opening to ending credits. (I certainly appreciated the 70s-era MPAA screen notifying us of the 'R' rating.) It's not wowing us with anything. It's simply delivering a solid story and good performances in the same heartfelt way that Payne films like Nebraska or The Descendants did, if not quite so elevated in its look into the human condition as the latter. Or perhaps it simply felt that way because, again, we've seen this before; in my case, even moreso than others for reasons noted but not least because Hunham is as fond of Marcus Aurelieus' Meditations as I am ("This book, for me, is a combination of Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism all in one and without a single mention of 'God'!") That book has been a touchstone for me since I was roughly the same age as Angus and holds a lot of advice about life which seems obvious only after you've read it; in many ways, like The Holdovers, which is comfortably clichéd, but something that you don't mind, and even look forward to, seeing again.

Focusing on the pedestal

We saw Killers of the Flower Moon almost a week ago and it's taken me this long to get around to writing something about it because, in the end, it was all very mechanical and technical writing is not really my strong suit. That's a forward statement that would prepare most readers with the idea that I didn't like the film. That's actually not entirely the case. I like most Martin Scorsese films to one degree or another. But the problem I've had with his output for the latter half of his career (basically anything post-Goodfellas) is that he's taking the "favored actor" concept to the nth degree. Instead of telling a story, he's just signing the actors that he likes working with and building a production around them which is mostly just an opportunity for them to show off. So, yeah, I have a bit of a critique in mind.

Now, there's nothing wrong with actors "showing off." That's kinda what acting is in the first place. Sometimes, it can even be a great thing. Gangs of New York was completely carried by Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as Bill the Butcher. Indeed, the entire story is centered on him and his experience, despite Leonardo DiCaprio's presence as the nominal lead. It's a fun time watching DDL do his thing for two hours because, as with many of his roles, he's magnetic every time the camera is on him. But it only took one viewing to recognize that the film was basically all about his performance. The story is weak. There is precisely zero character development, as everyone knows what Amsterdam's motivations are from the outset and they don't change and neither does anyone else. It's just a showcase to demonstrate what a great actor Day-Lewis is. And that's fine. Some films are like that. It's what's normally referred to as a "vehicle" for whomever the star is. But even most vehicles have a story that goes somewhere at least mildly interesting and too many Scorsese movies in the latter half of his career really don't. Killers is no exception.

The basis of the story is excellent. It's about the discovery of oil on Osage land in Oklahoma in the early part of the 20th century and how the tribe became the richest people per capita in the world. It's also about how White people then moved in and scammed, stole, and literally murdered many Osage for their land rights and that money flowing from it. This is, as all of you know, something of a repetitive theme when it comes to US interaction with the native tribes of this continent. In this case, it was simply among the most blatant. That sounds like a situation that not only is unfamiliar to many, which can often lead to a good story full of tension, but is also loaded with potential for personal drama, as well. And the film has both of those elements to varying degrees... except that it begins with a documentary approach that essentially wholly describes the circumstances that precede and extend through the entire film. It basically gives the audience all of the dramatic cues before we even reach a moment where said cues would've provided that tension. It's as if Scorsese decided that he didn't want to be questioned as to the idea of scoring cheap emotional points, so he told us all of the bad things that would be happening, rather than letting us discover them through the story. This extends to most of the action in the film, where we see all of the crimes happening in plain sight; most notably those committed by DiCaprio, as the male lead, Ernest Burkhart. There are no faces hidden in shadow or behind masks (for very long) that would create any kind of dramatic effect later in the story where we discover the dastardly Burkhart being involved in these activities against his wife's people and, of course, his wife. We're just shown in documentary fashion everything that's happening.

Now, there's nothing wrong with this if we were watching an actual documentary. Likewise, it might be a little more tolerable if we were watching a more typical 90- to 120-minute film. It would still be disappointing, but wouldn't have brought me to the point where I was questioning what the point of the entire last third of the film was. But it's because that last third of the film is DiCaprio's opportunity to step on the pedestal that Scorsese has given him and emote to his heart's content. Part of the problem may be that, if we're going to see a star vehicle, we generally want that character to be entertaining. That's why it's a vehicle, because you want to see this person, whether it be the actor or the character, if not both, on the screen. But Burkhart is an emotionally-stunted and largely unintelligent person. And, yet, the last hour of the three-and-a-half hours that make up this "epic" is mostly just DiCaprio reenacting everything that we'd already seen for the first two-and-a-half hours. The entire courtroom and jail sequences are him simply admitting to and retelling the events of everything we'd already seen happen. It's like we were given access to the rehearsal and immediately after were shuffled into a room to watch a script reading. We're getting the same information, none of which is new or surprising or particularly compelling. Instead, it's just an opportunity for DiCaprio to demonstrate his evident talent (something we're also already aware of; The Revenant is one of my favorite American films of recent years.) That's not unentertaining, to a point. Watching Burkhart struggle to admit his guilt with his wife (Lily Gladstone), Molly's, eyes boring into him is a fine piece of acting on both their parts. But it also just retells the story that we'd already had explained to us even before we saw it the first time.

If we were going to be shown an acting tour de force in lieu of an actual story, I'd probably have been more entertained by seeing one from Gladstone, who was delightful as the smartest person in the room from the moment she first appears. And she does get plenty of screen time, but simply not as much as old Scorsese favorites DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, who these days doesn't often play a character so much as he plays Robert De Niro playing a character. And, of course, there's any number of cameos of big names from John Lithgow to Jesse Plemons to a scenery-chewing Brendan Fraser to Jason Isbell, a country music star whom I follow on Twitter who's highly entertaining as he interacts with people who probably think the White folks in this film are either Heroes of Progress or being persecuted by the mythical CRT zealots. Those people probably didn't want to see this, anyway, because it's presenting a story that might force them to question their star-spangled (White stars, mind you) version of American history. It's a story that needed to be told because, again, most are probably completely oblivious to it. It's an interesting story, even if macabre. But it's presented here as an excuse to showcase DiCaprio, which isn't at all what this story should have been about. Indeed, the fact that all of the Osage roles other than Molly are often stereotypical stand-ins makes one wonder if it was written from the ground-up as a star vehicle, rather than just adapted to one when it came into Scorsese's field of vision. But apparently he rewrote it to insure that it wasn't just a White Man's Burden thing. I'm, uh, not sure that worked the way he wanted it to.

Scorsese isn't a bad director any more than DiCaprio is a bad actor. But you look at the first half of the former's oeuvre and you see things like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, After Hours, and the aforementioned Goodfellas. Then you look at the latter half and you see things like Casino, Gangs, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Irishman. There are high points to all of them. They're not bad films. But they're also not great films because they don't try to tell a story. They're mostly just settings for his favorite actors to do their thing and all of which you either know of because you watch the news (Wolf), have seen many times before especially from Scorsese (Casino), or get explained to you before the drama even begins (The Irishman which, honestly, is probably the exception to this group, in that it's really not a good film, overall.) I didn't actively dislike Killers. I think it's worth seeing if you don't know anything about the story of the Osage. Do I think it's worth sitting in a theater for three-and-a-half hours to watch the same events be relayed to you twice? No. No, I do not. Watch it via Amazon over a couple evenings or something like that and do it mostly for Gladstone's performance. But if you were expecting to see another Scorsese classic on the order of Goodfellas, I'm afraid you're not going to be able to see past the pedestal.