Bookish charm
The kids are all right, it’s the teachers that require disciplinary measures in Alexander Payne’s eagerly awaited return to the director’s chair. The Holdovers arrives 20 years after the filmmaker and actor Paul Giamatti took a road trip through rolling Californian vineyards in the Oscar-winning comedy drama Sideways.
Lightning strikes twice because their reunion is every bit as good, painting a vibrant portrait of scholarly angst in the vein of Dead Poets Society in a 1970s working-class New England town blanketed by Christmastime snow.
Discomfort and joy are evident from the opening scene of Giamatti’s gruff professor marking students’ exam papers.
“Lazy, vulgar, rancid little Philistines,” he snorts, puffing on a tobacco pipe. It is the perfect introduction to an irascible schoolmaster, who begrudgingly remains on campus to chaperone any unfortunate boys who can’t travel home for the holidays.
With artful precision and an occasional sentimental flourish, screenwriter David Hemingson strands Giamatti in frozen seclusion with the school’s head cook (Da’vine Joy Randolph) and a rebellious 17-year-old student (Dominic Sessa) who is one failing grade away from relocation to a military academy. Giamatti is magnificent as a stickler for the rules, who incurs the headmaster’s wrath for failing the son of a prominent senator. He sparks a touching partnership with Sessa in the latter’s first film role.
A scene in which the stuffy professor reassures his ward that he won’t repeat the sins of his late father is spectacular. Joy Randolph is sensational too, barely holding back a tsunami of grief for her boy, who died in Vietnam. The emotional dam bursts on screen with two words: “He’s gone.” She will ride that wave to the Oscars.
This lazy, vulgar, rancid little Philistine is a sucker for a genuine emotional pay-off that leaves a lump in the throat. Payne’s bittersweet life lesson doesn’t disappoint.
‘‘ A scene where the professor says he won’t repeat sins is spectacular