Road to the Oscars Review: ‘The Holdovers’ has Powerful and Believable Story Arcs

Every year, in the time between when the Oscar nominations are announced and the actual Oscars ceremony is held, OFM movie reviewer and associate editor Julie River tries to watch all the movies nominated for best picture that year. In the years since the pandemic, this has become easier, as a lot of the movies are now on streaming.

So far, she hasn’t made it through all of the nominees since the category expanded from five nominees to as many as 10, but this year she intends to pull it off and write reviews of each movie as she goes through them. She already saw and reviewed American Fiction as part of the Denver Film Festival, and she already saw Barbie and it was reviewed by fellow OFM writer Ivy Owens. OFM writer Owen Swallow also already reviewed Poor Things. That leaves seven movies for her to watch and review. Can she make it through all 10? Find out on OFM’s Road to the Oscars!

Rating: 96/100

The Holdovers is the latest dramedy from acclaimed writer and director Alexander Payne. Payne has been the brains behind a number of movies to go up for Oscars, including the teen black comedy Election, which was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, the stark drama Nebraska which earned him a nomination for Best Director, and the brilliant mid-life crisis comedy Sideways and the family drama The Descendants, both of which were nominated for Best Picture and Best Director and won for Best Adapted Screenplay.

That means Payne has two screenplay awards under his belt but none for directing or best picture, which tends to be standard for comedy films, as the Academy doesn’t always appreciate a good comedy and will often throw them a screenplay award as almost a consolation prize. In nearly 100 years of Academy Awards, it’s often said that only about eight comedies have ever won the Best Picture Oscar, and of those, a number of them, such as The Artist and Driving Miss Daisy, stretch the definition of “comedy.”

The Holdovers tells the story of Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), the strictest and most hated classics teacher at a New England boarding school in 1970 called Barton Academy. As punishment for failing the son of a wealthy donor to the school, Hunham is put in charge of supervising the “holdovers” over Christmas break, the students who have nowhere else to go and are left at the school for the holiday. But after one of the holdover students’ fathers shows up to whisk him and most of the other boys away for a ski vacation, Hunham is left supervising the sole student left behind, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa). The situation finds the teacher and student, who were once fiercely at odds each other, developing an unlikely friendship.

The Holdovers marks the second collaboration between Payne and Giamatti, who first worked together on Sideways. Giamatti’s performance as Hunham is nuanced and powerful. The audience really finds themselves hating him in the beginning of the film, and then find more and more relatable aspects to his character. At his core, Hunham isn’t a sadist or a mean person, but someone who deeply resents the privilege of these rich boarding school boys, especially as he also attended Barton Academy as a child but on a scholarship.

Dominic Sessa makes his acting debut in this film, having been discovered when the casting director invited the students at the real-life school where the film was shot, Deerfield Academy, to audition. For someone who has no previous credits to his name and who seems to have been granted an audition almost as a courtesy, Sessa puts out an outstanding performance. The chemistry between Giamatti and Sessa is perfect, both at the beginning when they find themselves hating each other and towards the end when they’ve developed a newfound bond.

There aren’t a lot of other characters that could really be said to be leads in this movie, with the notable exception of Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the school’s head cook who is grieving her son who was recently killed in the Vietnam War. Mary is going through a difficult journey of grieving because of the knowledge that a student deferment would have saved her son from being drafted in the war if only she had enough money to send him to college, thus highlighting the stark difference between those with privilege and those without it. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is an incredible actor who I’ve admired since her appearance in the Hulu adaptation of my favorite book, High Fidelity, and her performance in this movie almost steals the show at times. Mary and Paul’s unlikely closeness—which they arrive at due to their shared disgust with the school’s wealthy, privileged children—is one of the first signs in the film that Paul is more than a strict disciplinarian.

The character arcs in this movie are really the best part of it. Characters go through remarkable transformations, but yet those transformations seem very believable and earned. Hunham becomes a warmer character as the movie goes on, and Tully finds himself discovering a sympathy for his teacher that he never had before. The conclusion of the film seems almost inevitable under the circumstances, but the road they take to get there is a long emotional journey that I bought into the whole way.

Another amazing aspect of this film was how authentically they depicted the 1970s, even down to using retro-looking logos for the production and distribution companies, Miramax and Focus Features respectively, neither of which actually existed in 1970. The attention to detail gives the movie an added level of realness. Despite being a comedy—and, at times, a truly hilarious one—none of the humor is based in exaggeration of reality. The movie is completely grounded in the reality of the 1970s.

Paul Giamatti is a favorite to win the Best Actor Oscar at this year’s Oscars and, even with seven films still left to watch, I feel pretty good about his chances. The actor was never nominated for his previous collaboration with Payne in Sideways, being criminally passed over for the likes of Clint Eastwood and Johnny Depp. His only other Oscar nomination was for Best Supporting Actor in Cinderella Man in 2006, which he lost to George Clooney. This seems like Giamatti’s year, and he definitely deserves praise for his acting in this film.

But while Giamatti’s likely to take home the Best Actor Oscar, and the film might be in the running for a few other awards like Best Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and Best Original Screenplay, I doubt the Academy is going to break character and give the Best Picture award to a comedy this year, even if The Holdovers has the second best Vegas odds of winning (tied with Poor Things). Whether or not it deserves to win, however, is another matter entirely, and one that I’ll reserve judgement for until I’ve seen all 10 movies.

The Holdovers is streaming now on Peacock.