Trailer "Staying for the holiday"/Tulip Media
The score: five stars/Walla! system, image processing
The seventies are considered the golden age of American cinema.
Therefore, to say about a film that it reminds of that period is the most beautiful compliment, like saying about a footballer that it reminds of Pele.
"The Holdovers", which comes to Israel this weekend, deserves the ultimate superlative.
It takes place between 1970 and 1971, and it looks as if it was also filmed in those years.
The film was directed by Alexander Payne, who broke out about half a century ago with films like "About Schmidt", which made him one of the most respected creators in independent American cinema.
In the last decade he faded a bit and also took a long hiatus, but here he is back in a big way, joining forces with Paul Giamatti, who starred in his best film to date, Sideways from 2004.
Giamatti plays a character whose first name is also Paul.
This is a teacher at a Prep School, a unique and specific American institution, a kind of combination of a prep school and boarding school for boys only, designed to train privileged boys for studies at a prestigious college on the East Coast, from where the rest of their lives will be paved.
Deserves the ultimate compliment.
From "Remaining for the holiday"/Tulip Media
The expectation is that he will not interfere.
Many of the boys are "sons of", and he should give them a hundred no matter what.
But Paul is a strange chicken, who insists on educating his students and giving them the grade they deserve.
As a result, and despite his knowledge and wisdom, both the management and the trainees despise him.
The friction comes to a head in the run-up to Christmas.
The vast majority of students go on vacation with their families, but there are some who have no one to be with and therefore stay on campus.
The management is looking for a teacher who will stay in place on a responsible adult basis, and since Paul is a loser without children, it's easy to blame it on him.
Thus he finds himself watching over Angus, one of his most hostile and alienated students.
As the name of the film implies, the two are required to spend time together in the desolate place, and they meet other characters there whose holiday is not happy.
For example, the cook at the Mossad, a black woman whose son died in the army, where he enlisted to finance the school fees, because that's what Americans who don't have rich parents do.
They also socialize with a waitress who works shifts on both Thanksgiving and Christmas to make ends meet.
Through these encounters, the film illustrates the unbearable tension that exists throughout the history of the United States - the tension between the percent who have everything and the 99 percent who have nothing, between those born with a spoonful of gold in their mouths and those who are handed the cutlery, between those who inherit Their parents have a chair in the most prestigious institutions and those who are very close to them, but somewhere down below, in the kitchen or in the restaurant of the Migdal Hasan.
Perfect casting.
From "Remaining for the holiday"/Tulip Media
Paul and Angus are the ideal characters to illustrate the tension between the two sides of the barrier, because they are both part of the system - but also outsiders in it.
The teacher is seemingly flesh and blood from America's intellectual elite, but despises her and the way she conducts herself.
Angus is seemingly part of the fat and the sleazy, but his parents are really not an exemplary family - his family is dysfunctional, for reasons we will find out later.
I mean, they're both underdogs who don't really belong anywhere, with one foot here and one foot there.
They are not members of the working class, but neither are they in any way representatives of the privileged.
The willingness of the two to cross the lines takes them and us on a journey, which also easily crosses the borders of the campus, and ultimately leads to some emotional peaks.
The script written by David Hemmingson is a bit spoon-feeding, but fluid, witty, and presents the two juiciest and funniest insults we've seen in cinema in recent years.
The one who voices them is Paul, who due to his venom and stinginess could have turned out to be an unbearable character, but thanks to Giamatti's personal charm manages to evoke sympathy and identification, and avoid pathos despite his losers.
On his side, Dominic Sesse is wonderful in the character of Angus - it's hard to believe that this is his first film role.
Davyn Joy Randolph is rightfully expected to win an Oscar for her acting work.
The casting and acting of each and every one of the other supporting characters, however minor they may be, is also offensive.
Payne and his wonderful cinematographer, Dane Iggy Breild, paint this adventure with broad brushstrokes that take the chamber and minor story and give it epic volume.
The use of zooms and other means of expression that were typical of the American cinema of the seventies is done with good taste, and without fake nostalgia or strained papers.
The soundtrack presents songs from the period, for example by Cat Stevens, alongside more contemporary music, but it also sounds like something Simon and Garfunkel wrote in real time.
All these give the film a classic quality.
Just as you taste good fruit and say "wow, it came straight from the tree", so do "staying for the holiday" - the feeling is that it came straight from the seventies, without food coloring and preservatives.
The cinematic equivalent of a handshake.
From "Remaining for the holiday"/Tulip Media
In an interview with him, Alexander Payne said that he met Walter March, the legendary editor who worked on films like "Apocalypse Now" and knows the seventies very well.
He told him that more than anything, the spirit of the time was expressed in this: when the characters parted, they did not kiss on the cheek, but shook hands.
The same goes for "staying for the holiday".
He avoided the babbling, the begging and the excessive effort of the kiss on the cheek.
Instead, it is the cinematic equivalent of a handshake - an action that has class, restraint, true gentlemanly composure.
We have already seen quite a few films about an unusual relationship between an eccentric mentor and a sensitive apprentice.
But unlike "Follow Him" or "Will Hunting", for example, "Staying for the Holiday" does not go in the direction of tragedy or redemption, but in much more subtle, interesting and complex directions.
In the restrained spirit of the handshake, Paul and Angus do not turn each other's world upside down, but encourage each other to be the best version of themselves, and remind each other of the most important thing in the world - where there are no people, try to be a person.
"Staying for the Holidays" takes place at Christmas, against the background of the snow that has already become so identified with it in popular culture.
In the American media it has already been announced as a new Christmas classic, one that will be screened and watched every December.
And yet, it is also a very Jewish film, because it is precisely on the Christian holiday that its heroes learn and teach us the most important Jewish lesson of all - how to be a man.
More on the same topic:
Paul Giamatti
Alexander Payne
Oscar