Review by Susanne Nielsen
Paul Giamatti is excellent in his role as Paul Hunham, a luckless adjunct professor of ancient history at a private boarding school, where he is left behind during the winter holidays with a group of “hold-overs”. He has been put in charge of the students who have no place to go during the Christmas Holidays. The film’s director Alexander Payne is reunited in this production with Giamatti after their successful pairing in the film Sideways. In a similar sentiment towards his characters, the director chose a story based upon the book by Marcel Pagnol (The Butcher’s Wife), known for his quiet humor. This film is, we should point out, for those who would like to see another side of the holidays.
While Paul seems to accept his lot without protest, as atonement for having withheld a passing grade to the son of a rich donor, Giamatti plays this underdog role with elegance. His students do their best to escape their plight, left in the care of what seems their least favorite “father figure”.
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Precedent for their disrespect of this professor has long been set, as we see. Hunham’s colleagues and the school’s headmaster show him little regard. He accepts all of this for reasons the film reveals along the way. His charges Students challenge his attempts to exert any type of authority which adds comedy to the plot.
But it is the instructor’s acceptance of his own short comings, emotionally and academically, his willingness to accept his fate and to be the companion and equal to his two school employees left to assist him, that lets us root for Paul. As he brings humanity to all that the world around them seems to lack, the professor becomes a gentle hero. His empathy to the cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who just lost her son to the Vietnam war and to the school’s janitor are endearing and lovely. He accepts her mild mockery and even acts on her advice as she encourages his romantic pursuit towards a school employee he has fancied for a long time.
The humor is quiet and well-paced, the emotions convincing. For a short time everyone sets aside the strict code of school conduct that seems to have emotionally have served none of them. Now they each bring more heart to the lives of one another, form a bond (Giamatti with newcomer Dominic Sessa) and the result is trust and support in surprising ways.
With so few characters in this story, and its slow pace to reveal the relationships among them, the director lets us discover what drives his main character. The Holdovers is a quiet and surprisingly charming film due mostly to Paul Giamatti, a film full of lessons for life.
