The Ones Left Behind

The Holdovers a film by Alexander Payne.  With Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph.  In theaters and streaming for an arm and leg on Amazon Prime.  *****

Three more or less sane adults (though one is just eighteen), all of whom have strong points, weak points, deeply held secrets, but none of whom is the good or bad guy.  A simple drama that takes place over a couple of weeks and illuminates their whole lives.  A sane skillful screenplay.  Lots of comedy, but not a laff riot.  Superb understated acting.  A story that is deeply satisfying emotionally.  No gimmicks.  I can’t remember when I last saw a movie like this, though I used to see them all the time.

And we saw it at home on our own TV.  No loud noises of guns or falling bombs, no mindless chatter or smells of rancid buttered popcorn.

The premise of The Holdovers is simple.  It’s a small drama about people stranded at a prominent boys’ boarding school during Christmas break.  At first it’s five boys, including a Korean, a Mormon whose parents are on a missionary trip, a guy whose father won’t let him come home until he cuts his hair (the year is 1971, when such intergenerational battles were common), a guy whose house is being remodeled, and a guy whose widowed mother has just remarried and is off on a honeymoon. The boys don’t much like each other and hate the situation.  Add to the mix the history teacher who is probably the most reviled teacher at the school—both by faculty and students—and a cook who is staying behind to cook meals for these misfits.  The dorms are closed so they’re bunking in the infirmary.  It’s a dreadful situation.

Four of the boys are rescued by a kind of deus ex machina: the father who wants his son to cut his hair relents and flies to the school in his personal helicopter, offering to take all of the boys on a skiing vacation.  Four of them go, but Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), whose mother is on her honeymoon with “the rich guy she married,” can’t go because the school can’t reach his parents.  He is in many ways the most troubled of the students, smart but with a major chip on his shoulder, deeply cynical.  He’s been kicked out of two schools before, and if he gets kicked out of this one is headed to military school, next stop Vietnam.  He’s desperately trying to hold on, though his temper keeps flaring.  Now it’s just him and the two adults.

The teacher, though an utter turd, is a recognizable prep school type.  His name is Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), and he was a student at the school himself, went off to Harvard then came back to his alma mater to teach and has been there ever since.  He believes in the ideals of the school, especially its high academic standards, and won’t flinch from his principles, even if he’s flunking an important donor’s son.  He’s difficult, sarcastic, and never lets up on the work, even over Christmas break.  He addresses the students as Mister and might as well be a military commander.  He’s also walleyed and has an unfortunate fishy smell from some obscure medical condition.  His whole persona seems bent on protecting himself from vulnerability in the world.

The cook is a black woman named Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).  I was prepared for her to represent the voice of homespun wisdom, and to some extent she does, but she’s also got plenty of problems of her own.  Her son attended the same school on a scholarship while she was working there, hoped to go to Swarthmore but his mother couldn’t afford the place, so he joined the army and figured he’d go on the GI Bill.  Unfortunately, he was sent to Vietnam and killed, as we discover when the film opens.  Mary smokes, drinks too much, sometimes sees the students as entitled little shits, but she does her job and cooks for them.  Hunham sneaks off to her small apartment in the evenings to drink some booze.  And she manages an elaborate ham dinner for Christmas day.

It is when these three escape to Boston after the holiday that things get interesting.  Mary goes to Roxbury to stay with her sister.  Paul and Angus stay at the Sheraton Commander and tour Cambridge and Boston.  They visit the art museum, where Hunham to some extent explains his obsession with history; they even—the ultimate New England eccentricity—go candlepin bowling.  But chance encounters on that trip (one of which was planned, by Angus) explain the reasons that both of these men are so bristly.  And the two of them, through learning the other’s secret, grow closer.

Nobody’s problems are solved.  Mary has a good visit with her sister, and all three return to the school.  Angus’ parents eventually get wind of the excursion, and are furious about one of the consequences.  It’s a problem for all three until Hunham steps in.  In some ways he’s the most vulnerable.  But he’s also, finally, the most human.

I graduated from a boarding school five years before this drama was to have taken place, so it all seemed vaguely familiar (including that turd of a teacher), except that—as my wife pointed out—all the guys had long hair, not just the rebellious ones, as was true in my day.  Everything about the place is civil, all the boys in jackets and ties, but behind it all are the same roiled emotions that all adolescents face.  Only a renowned director like Alexander Payne could get such a retro movie produced, and he got a crack screenplay from David Hemingson.  I for one was glad to see it.  I’ve had enough Marvel heroes, and would love to get back to real people.