Professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) loves history. Not just any old history but antiquity: Greeks, Romans, Sumerians — you name ’em, Paul knows all about ’em. And not just because he believes the past informs the present, but because the past is the present. The clothing might be different and the names have changed, but if we can solve those ancient riddles, then we might be able to crack the code right in front of us.
It’s fitting then that director Alexander Payne sets his latest feature, The Holdovers, not in the present but in the past. The year is 1971, and the movie looks like it: lots of yellows and browns, tweed for days and grainy cinematography shot on 35 mm.
Paul teaches at Barton Academy, a New England prep school for rich kids, and ends up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop when he gets stuck supervising the students who can’t go home for Christmas break. Those held-over students (Brady Hepner, Michael Provost, Ian Dolley, Jim Kaplan and Dominic Sessa) make for a motley crew. Add in the school cook, Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the janitor, Danny (Naheem Garcia), a school establishment too cheap to keep the heat going, and no one’s happy to be stuck here during the cold Massachusetts winter.
Salvation comes when one of the student’s dads arrives in a helicopter and offers to take everyone skiing for the holidays. The boys rejoice, as does Paul. All he needs to rid himself of their company are parental permissions, which he gets for everyone save Angus (Sessa).
Now it’s just Angus, Paul, Mary and Danny stuck inside Barton’s drafty halls, and Angus is determined to make the least of it. A sullen figure with a wealth of emotional baggage, he is as bitter at the world as Paul is cranky. They make for a perfect pair and venture off the school grounds for a trip to the emergency room, a holiday party hosted by one of Barton’s teachers and an overnight adventure into Boston.
The Holdovers is a calmly paced movie that allows its characters space to breathe, think and express themselves in their own manner. It’s a narrative not in any hurry to go anywhere but to revel in comedic moments of character.
And thanks to the comedy and the genuine heartwarming relationships that build, The Holdovers is not a movie you want to hurry up and get to where it’s going. Where that is, I’m not so sure. For all of Paul’s emphasis that the past helps us confront our present, I’m at a loss for what Payne and Hemingson hoped to accomplish by setting their story in the early 1970s. Maybe they don’t want anything out of it more than an enjoyable time tinged not by nostalgia but by appreciation. Everything seemed hopeless then, too, and we made it out of that.
That’s not exactly an earth-shattering revelation, but like Paul’s speech to Angus about the importance of learning from history, it’s something worth being reminded about from time to time.
ON SCREEN:The Holdovers is now playing in theaters.
