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.