Unmoved, The Holdout

Why doesn’t THE HOLDOVERS, the latest film from Alexander Payne, work for me the way it seems to work for everyone else?

I saw it at a packed preview screening before the film’s official release, and the audience laughed and gasped at every mildly amusing line of dialogue or tiny plot development. Such was the forced nature of their reaction that I started to wonder if there were “plants” in the audience. They even applauded at the end. I suspect it was that thing  where people who get free tickets to a film are doggedly determined to love it no matter what. You see this a lot when you attend film festivals. There’s a long history of films that slayed at festivals only to die a quick death at the regular box office.

The question is did feeling so out of tune with my audience make me even more resistant than I already was to the film? 

Well, I don’t think it helped.

Like most movie geeks I can be stubborn that way.

It may also be I was hyper-critical because this genre, the slice-of-life sad/funny character piece, is usually my sweet spot as a filmgoer. I am a sentimental sap. I like nothing more than a movie that makes me care about loser characters and their personal crises and the catharsis of seeing them grow (just) a little bit and connect to other people. These types of “small” stories are becoming as rare as unicorns in the current cinematic climate and I have great nostalgia and hunger for them. So, my disappointment when they miss the mark, feel phony or contrived to me, is all that much greater.

It is also true Alexander Payne’s movies have always been hit or miss for me.

I loved ELECTION, his scorching black comedy about High School politics with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick. Payne’s snide misanthropy worked worked perfectly for that satire – it was almost exhilarating.

I didn’t share the widespread love, though, for SIDEWAYS, his first film with Paul Giammatti, which I felt was too cynical and pointlessly cruel to its protagonist. There is a fine line between giving us quirky flawed “losers” and showing actual contempt for them.

Later on, ABOUT SCHMIDT and NEBRASKA, while still martini dry, found a much gentler balance, showed more compassion for his characters.  It felt like Payne was growing not just as a filmmaker, but as a human being.

On the other hand, I absolutely hated THE DESCENDANTS with George Clooney, a blatant awards bid which went soft to the point of melodrama. I did not believe a single moment of that film.

And, of course, the less said about the bizarre waste of time and talent that was  DOWNSIZING, with Matt Damon, the better.  

It may be that after that failure Payne (once again, as with THE DESCENDANTS)  over-corrected in pursuit of pleasing the audience. Because the bottom line with THE HOLDOVERS is that, unfortunately, I felt emotionally manipulated and never completely bought into the details of the story. From the first scenes, something about it seemed “written” to me – as opposed to alive and unfolding in real time before my eyes. It all felt “movie familiar” and too pat. 

I do respect the film’s desire to be true to the 1970’s time period – and, on that front, it succeeds. It has all the muted grime of my favorite era.

Everything else, though, from the overly-familiar setting (an upper-class boarding school) to the two lead characters, set in opposition but not enough to create actual tension, feels contrived. The subsequent “explanations” for why they are who they are – Giammatti getting kicked out of Harvard, the student (Dominic Sessa) having a father who is mentally ill – are more Mad Lib-style interchangeable screenwriting tropes than real reasons, real trauma. 

Even Da’Vine Joy Randolph, deserving of her Oscar win and definitely the film’s high point as the school lunch lady who has lost her son in Vietnam, is saddled with a fairly one-note character who never fully evolves. 

The final conflict, where the mother of the boy shows up at school angry that he has been allowed to visit his father in a mental ward, feels particularly fake. It makes little sense and is there only to force Giammatti’s character to take a stand of integrity for the young man even if it means losing his job at the academy. It is “Dead Poets Society” meets “Scent Of A Woman” all over again.

It seems to me Payne is always torn between his basic pessimistic nature – a snarky hipster’s view of “little people” – and his professional need to give an audience an easily digestible (if instantly forgettable) comedy. 

In any case, I hope he doesn’t take the wrong lessons from this film’s overly-generous critical reception, and next time gives us something that, whether downbeat or upbeat, is organic and authentic.

A feelgood movie needs to first make us feel it’s real.