The Holdovers

If The Boys in the Boat stirs dim echoes of Chariots of Fire (1981), Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers may conjure up memories of Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989). Like that earlier film, this one is set in a private boarding school for boys, but instead of Robin Williams infusing his charges with a love of poetry, we have Paul Giamatti teaching them to loathe Thucydides.

Williams scored an Academy Award nomination for best actor, and it would be surprising if Giamatti doesn’t follow in his footsteps, especially since he won a Golden Globe for the role this week. The history of the cinema is stuffed with inspirational teachers, from Mr Chips to Monsieur Lazhar, but there’s something even more compelling about the misanthropic, bitter and twisted teacher everyone despises.

The year is 1970, the place is Barton Academy in up-state Massachusetts – a fictional prep school cobbled together from parts of five real schools. It’s the beginning of the Christmas holidays, and the teachers are scouting around for someone to stay at school and look after the handful of boys who, for one reason or another, are not spending the yuletide with their families.

Inevitably the job gets foisted onto Paul Hunham (Giamatti), the Classics teacher. As Paul is a bachelor with nowhere to go and, apparently, no friends, he is the logical candidate. He accepts the responsibility with both stoicism and cynicism, having no desire to share the holiday with a group of Christmas rejects.

For the boys it’s even less fun. Paul is notorious for his acid tongue and his delight in failing the sons of tycoons and politicians. From a motley collection of five boys, most are given permission to go off on a ski trip. Now there is only one: willowy senior Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), whose mother has left with her new partner for a holiday in St Kitts. At the last minute, Angus gets a phone call telling him he’s not invited because the lovebirds would like to spend some quality time together.

While the snow lies round about, the holiday becomes a battle of wills between Paul and Angus, overseen by the school cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), whose only son has just been killed in Vietnam. In watching the exchanges within this trio, we see a different, more sympathetic, side of Paul, who drops his armour when talking with Mary. As we piece together Angus’ story, we can see his intelligence, and his deep unhappiness.

In a film that manages to be touching and consistently funny, you won’t be surprised to learn that a rapport develops between existentially miserable Paul, who seeks solace in Jim Beam and Marcus Aurelius, and prickly, troublesome Angus. It becomes a quasi father-and-son relationship, with Mary in the occasional role of mother.

This conflicts with Paul’s habit of keeping everyone at a distance. A bad eye and a body odour condition he can’t control have convinced him he is nobody’s idea of an attractive companion. When the strange Miss Crane (Carrie Preston) bakes him a plate of cookies, he seems alarmed.

On an excursion into Boston, Paul and Angus will learn each other’s best-kept secrets, laying bare two life stories that have been kept heretofore under wraps. If Giamatti is reliably good in the role of Paul, Dominic Sessa, on debut, is a revelation. We can expect to be hearing more about him in years to come.

The ending, both melancholy and satisfying, might even be interpreted as happy. Like so many of Payne’s protagonists, Paul is a man who has spent his life as a permanent “holdover”, going through the same rituals and routines, feeling depressed, resigned, incapable of change.

The events of late 1970 force him to drop the mask of stoicism and embrace what his beloved Greeks called catharsis – a long-postponed emotional release from a stitched-up personality. It could only happen at Christmas.