*Premise spoilers.*
Our next Best Picture nominee, like Past Lives, is an intimate drama that takes its time to quietly develop and deepen our understanding of the characters and the relationships between them. Both films have more in common with each other than with Barbie, the first Best Picture nominee I saw this year, but they’re very distinct from each other as well. I thought all three of them were great, so this is shaping up to be a strong Oscar season.
Paul Hunham, who teaches classics at the illustrious Barton Academy, finds himself saddled with the job of looking after the “holdovers,” the students with nowhere to go over Christmas break. After an odd turn of events, he’s left with just one student: Angus Tully, a surly, defiant kid who very understandably doesn’t want to be there. Together with Mary Lamb, who runs the kitchen and is experiencing her first Christmas since her son was killed in Vietnam, the three of them vacillate between driving each other up the wall and making lonely connections during one of the worst times of year to be alone.
The stuffy boarding school setting might call to mind Dead Poets Society, but Paul is no Robin Williams. Far from it—most of the students hate him for his pedantic adherence to the rules and open resentment of the rich boys who are going to sail through life without earning it. Similarly, the disparate band of students Paul starts out with might suggest The Breakfast Club vibes, but it becomes an even more interesting movie when that’s whittled down to just Angus. Paul already thinks Angus is an obstinate little shit who likes to push his buttons, and Angus, whose Christmas plans fell through at the last minute in a pretty awful way, is mad at the entire world right now, but maybe Paul most of all. Mary does her best to quietly hold things together while also dealing with her grief, repeatedly trying to get Paul to understand where Angus is coming from.
This is a great film. The trajectory of the relationships across the story feels just right—messy, with a lot of backsliding, and believable for what they’re going through together. There are so many excellent scenes, from Paul and Angus’s early battle of wills to Paul’s painfully awkward first attempts to try and make the whole experience a little bit better. All the characters are written with great specificity, borrowing from established types while remaining individuals. And this is a film that leads with its screenplay in what feels like a rather old-fashioned way. I love how the scenes and scenarios build, how important payoffs are set up throughout the film, and how the story takes unexpected turns at key moments. Writer David Hemingson earned the film a Best Original Screenplay nomination.
Because the primary cast is so small, each performance has even more weight, and everyone delivers. Leading the pack, of course, is Paul Giamatti as the pretentious stickler Paul. He sinks right into the character and is impeccable from start to finish. He’s nominated for his work here, as is Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who plays Mary (Giamatti for Leading Actor, Randolph for Supporting Actress.”) Randolph first caught my attention in Dolemite is My Name, where she gave a very different performance in a very different movie, but she’s wonderfully effective here, subtly portraying a mother who’s working over the holidays to try and hold her heavy grief at bay. And although he wasn’t nominated, Dominic Sessa is fantastic in his feature film debut as Angus. He does a great job of balancing the different sides of the character, pairing his snarky/sneering moments with his hurting/vulnerable ones.
Warnings
Language, sexual references, drinking/smoking/drug use, and strong thematic elements.
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