Mere hours separate the students at Barton Academy from Christmas Break, and while many are delighted that their classes have been cut short, the students of Paul Hunham’s (Paul Giamatti) antiquities class are not as lucky.  “Wall Eye” as he is unaffectionately nicknamed by the students for his amblyopia is equally disliked by the faculty for his stern, rigid, and unpleasant demeanor.  As such, he is directed by the headmaster, Dr. Hardy Woodrup (Andrew Garman), that he, along with Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the head cook still grieving the death of her son, will be responsible for the students staying at school over the holiday.  Not that Paul had any plans to begin with, but this unfortunate development gets even worse when he realizes that it is one of his own bratty students, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), whom he will be spending this lonely holiday with at the empty boarding school. 

Alexander Payne directs The Holdovers from a David Hemingson script for release by Focus Features.  The 133-minute film debuted at the Telluride Film Festival, making its rounds through the various fall festivals and picking up considerable buzz ahead of its theatrical release.  Shot in 1.66:1 by Eigil Bryld and with production design by Ryan Warren Smith, the film is evocative of the holiday classics of the 1970s, the same period of which the film is set, allowing audiences to nestle up with the film as if it were a warm blanket or a chunky sweater.  It feels so comforting and familiar even on its initial viewing, but the story presented is still new and exciting, and the trio at the heart of it all display some incredible chemistry. 

The film reunites Giamatti and Payne after almost two decades apart since their widely celebrated Sideways (2004).  Giamatti is magnetic as the reclusive and misanthropic tenured professor, but he mines Hemingson’s text and refines the human elements of the character so that we build sympathy for the curmudgeon.  It is a tale as old as time as the grinchy man opens his heart and reveals himself to be a warm person, hurt, and craving love, but to watch Giamatti trace this tested arc is remarkable.  The Holdovers is a story about the growth of all three characters, and Hemingson is not bound by the basic black-and-white morality of these tales, instead opting for almost novel-like depths so that we as an audience are scorned by all of these characters across the run time, and then forgive them.  Paul is our main entry point into the story, but the film only works as well as it does because Giamatti is an incredibly gracious and giving actor to his screen partners, especially Sessa in his debut role. 

Sessa was plucked from the drama program at Deerfield Academy, the school used for the film, by casting director Susan Shopmaker.  The young actor gives a revelatory performance as the deeply troubled teen, who, like his nemesis at the podium, has found himself scorned by life and erected massive defenses against all other people.  His behavior makes him a difficult lead as he lashes out at faculty and other students, coupled with his unreliable narration – though, the film does not utilize voiceover – we quickly learn that we can never quite believe what Angus may be telling us because he is either outright lying or lashing out.  Most of these lies are to protect himself by muddying his motivations, but sometimes he lies to protect others, too.  It is a very interesting way to distill character information and it is a testament to Hemingson’s writing as we begin to see these flashes of a good-natured young man who is trying to do his best and create relationships with people better than he had to rely on in his own life.  In some ways, Angus is the driving force of the film because many of the events across the winter break are spurred into motion by his antics, especially in the second half on a field trip over to Boston.  His brash nature forces Paul out of his shell, but as Paul refuses to give up on the boy – first out of necessity and later out of genuine care – Angus builds trust with his teacher as he takes on a fatherly role; something the boy is sorely missing. 

Keeping this oil and water pairing on track is Randolph in an absolutely stunning performance.  There is not an ounce of cynicism shown towards her, and her grief is never once used as a joke, but instead, the script allows her to travel across a full spectrum of emotions as she processes the death of her son, a Barton Alumni who was pulled away from his collegiate studies to serve in the war.  One of the really interesting things about the script is how it handles Mary’s race in a way that the film addresses it because the power and economic differences between her and the other faculty and the student body are unavoidable but the film does not filter this through the modern lens of a Twitter reassessment of classics as tends to happen in period pieces made today.  Rather, it is shown through action as Paul corrects the students as they complain about the food she serves in one of the earliest examples.  It is a matter of respect that Paul is trying to instill in the students, a bygone trait that they only passingly take to more so than the bygone eras he discusses in his lectures. Importantly, Hemingson does not treat Mary as a woman who needs to be spoken for or saved, evident in how she is quick to tell Paul that she knows what a monograph is or does not fall into a romance with the janitor, Danny (Naheem Garcia).

Focusing back on Rudolph’s performance, she brings a tenderness to the film that might not otherwise have blossomed between Angus’ teenage angst and Paul’s established stubbornness if left to their own devices.  Through the machinations of the plot, Mary is absent for much of the Boston escapades of the third act, but Hemingson gives her an incredible sequence with her sister, Peggy (Juanita Pearl), who is expecting a child of her own, so that the hole left behind is not too painfully felt by us in the audience.  Bryld’s camera lingers close on Mary as she opens up a small tin of baby clothes and knit booties, folding them tenderly into the drawers of the bureau in the awaiting nursery.  Peggy joins her on the bed in a wordless exchange because Hemingson knows that sometimes there are no words, and Randolf is not afraid of the lens here, allowing Mary to plumb into the deepest depths of her grief. 

Meanwhile, Paul and Angus are experiencing a much louder and bombastic catharsis of their own in Boston, and through the revelations here, Hemingson shows just how much thought and intricate care was put into building these characters into fully realized people. The two lonely men finally let each other in, and by doing so, we learn why Paul has remained at Barton for so long despite the faculty largely disliking him and what the actual reason for Angus not being allowed back home for the holidays is. The two actors go toe-to-toe, and when their anger with each other subsides, the growth and the union forged between them is totally believable.

What makes The Holdovers so delightfully special is its perceived simplicity in the same way that many of Hal Ashby’s and Robert Altman’s works seem simple but give way to deep human experience.  These added reveals are not part of a larger mystery, if anything, The Holdovers is more akin to a Christmas-set hang than it is a searing emotional drama, but Hemingson’s script opens itself up that these seismic developments feel at home in this otherwise nestled up film.  The emotions are big, and the moments land with crippling accuracy, but it never feels like melodrama or too much, rather it just follows the complexities of everyday life, if not directly relatable, then emphatic by even for the smallest of us with nowhere to go over the holidays.  Featuring tender performances by the cast, moments of sneaky humor – though they may not be as widely quotable as some of the other holiday repertoire staples – and overseen by Payne’s caring director, all work in service to making a film that feels like an instant classic; easy to sit back and enjoy but emotionally intelligent that its story resonates deep inside of us all.