Category: Paul Giamatti

THE HOLDOVERS

By Marc S. Sanders

Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers plays like a modern-day Christmas Carol.  Paul Giamatti is the Scrooge of the story set during mid-late December in 1970.  He’s an arrogant, unforgiving and unlikable teacher at Barton Academy, an all-boys Massachusetts boarding school.  Two other Scrooges round out the headlining cast.  Da’vine Joy Randolph is a cafeteria cook at the school.  Dominic Sessa is senior student – very bright, but also a troublemaker.  With uninvited circumstances facing the trio, they are the holdovers at the snow-covered school campus during the Christmas break, and they’ll have no choice but to get along or at least tolerate one another.

Alexander Payne often specializes in bringing attention to sad sack lonely souls like in Sideways, The Descendents, and About Schmidt.  His films begin with the characters seeming to accept their fates which lack a desire to smile and be cheerful.  Death or abandonment are common sources for their conditions.  Yet, with each of his wonderful films, it’s always fresh and new.  After an endless series of superheroes, I’m glad I get an occasional reminder of the humanity that can be found and treasured within entertaining films like The Holdovers.

Giamati is Paul Hunham.  Paul is disliked by everyone including his colleagues, the dean of the school (who was a former student of his), and especially the students.  Sessa is Angus who has a discipline problem but normally gets good grades. It’s most impressive that his B+ in Mr. Hunham’s class is leagues ahead of his classmates.  Randolph is Mary who recently lost her son, a recent graduate of Barton, after his entry in the Vietnam War.  These very different individuals have to share their lonesome disregard for one another.  Eventually though, their shields will whittle away and perhaps a couple of viewings of The Newlywed Game will open themselves up to each other.

I would be doing a great disservice to spoil the character backgrounds of these three who stem from different worlds and have nothing in common.  However, a theme found especially in Angus, and surprisingly in Paul, is a tactic of lying and exaggerating.  Within the context of the script written by David Hemingson, the untruths his characters tell work because it opens up further revelations that color in Paul, Angus and Mary’s current states.  The goal of The Holdovers is to scrape away the dirt on the surface in order to uncover the likable or sad nature hidden within. During a trip to Boston, Paul and Angus visit a museum and the irascible teacher finds an opportunity to remind his student that we do not study the past to only see what once was.  Paul tells Angus “…history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present.” If The Holdovers were to have a mission statement, this is what the film stands upon.  Angus, Paul and Mary may all be a variation of a Scrooge, but this story explores what precisely added up to their respective states of misery.

The performances in The Holdovers are perfection.  Dominic Sessa offers one of the best film introductions in history.  This actor looks as if you have seen him before and it’s surprising that his only experience ahead of this picture were school plays, he’s done at his own Massachusetts prep school where he was discovered by the filmmakers who were scouting locations for this film.  He ranks up there with the debut performances of Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple and Lukas Haas in Witness.  Da’Vine Joy Randolph is heartbreaking, yet lovable as a grieving, chain smoking widow and mother.  Having also watched her bring out her acerbic funny side in Only Murders In The Building, she’s now one of my favorite eclectic character actors working today.  She is wonderful with either natural comedy and drama or just broad, satiric humor.  Arguably, Paul Giamatti occupies the best role ever written for him.  He finds the right beats during different plot points in the movie.  He’s positively unlikable but there’s an understanding to be found amidst the carnage of his past and present.  The sensitivity of Mr. Hunham eventually shines through, but Giamatti keeps it blended with the angry grouch he’s introduced as in the first few scenes of the film.  It’s a dynamic portrayal.

Alexander Payne reminds me once again that everyone we encounter in life is going through some form of turmoil and suffering.  Some of us can hide it well.  Others have given up concealing what’s not attractive or pleasing to our peers.  If we only take the time to look beyond what’s in front of us then maybe a person’s past will justify their present heartache, and we can either grieve, lend support or simply listen.  Payne will have you convinced to do anything except give up on a person.

As I write this last particular paragraph, I recall when Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s character prepares to attend a Christmas Eve party.  She lays out a nice dress.  She does her hair up attractively.  She puts on makeup.  She brings fresh baked brownies and gives them to the hostess with a welcome smile.  A few minutes later though, poor Mary is breaking down in the kitchen and Paul and Angus are seeing a colleague at her weakest when she was doing her best to uphold a semblance of strength.  Mary’s past defines her present to both Angus and Paul.

Alexander Payne is a genius storyteller of the human heart.  He’s already been quoted as saying The Holdovers is not a Christmas movie and he despises the reference.  Mr. Payne will simply have to forgive me though.  His Oscar nominated piece is a wonderful film to watch ritually during the year-end holidays.  Christmas and New Year’s may be a time to celebrate with our loved ones and the fact that we’ve lived through another year gone by.  However, it is also the loneliest for many of us who can no longer celebrate with a family or friends.  It’s important to acknowledge the pain that comes with living under that circumstance.  Fortunately, Payne, with David Hemingson’s screenplay, finds the humor needed for these souls to shed their agony and proudly reveal the faults they carry and the suffering they had no choice but to endure.

The Holdovers is funny, touching, insightful and it’ll leave you embracing a new collection of characters that will not soon be forgotten within the enormous lexicon of memorable movie roles.  

This film will likely win Oscars for screenplay, supporting actress and actor.  A shame that Dominic Sessa was not nominated as well.  There could never be too many accolades for this picture.  It’s marvelous.

The Holdovers is another wonderful film.  Another best of 2023.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

By Marc S. Sanders

How much blood needs to be spilled to change the color of an ocean red?  The battle of Normandy during World War II showed quite a bit, and Steven Spielberg more than convincingly duplicates that terrible episode in world history with his war picture Saving Private Ryan. 

Spielberg earned his second Oscar for direction with this film from 1998.  It’s not only a technical marvel, but it’s a story that tests the nature of humanity when a squad of American soldiers ask themselves if saving the life of one man is worth sacrificing themselves.  Tom Hanks leads the team of recruits.

Saving Private Ryan begins on June 6, 1944 when thousands of American soldiers were inevitable sitting ducks as they washed ashore on Normandy Beach to engage in battle with German forces.  Spielberg’s footage is astonishing.  First of note is the cinematography is wisely washed out of color.  The sky is grey.  The ocean water and sand feel frigidly cold.  The most dominant color is blood red.  The fear displayed on the thousands of extras portraying soldiers, who never look mentally ready for battle, is palpable. 

The shots in this roughly thirty-minute opening do not compromise.  A soldier is seen walking around looking for his arm that has been shredded from below his elbow.  Other soldiers will turn over one way out of camera, but when they roll back into frame there’s a smoking hole where their face used to be.  Deadly head shots come out of nowhere.  Army medics have their hands soaked in bright red blood while trying to use scissors and thread to sew up wounds caked in wet sand. 

The action slows down at one point to focus on Hanks.  We haven’t even gotten to know his character yet, but we realize he is exhausted of this violence.  His hearing seems to deafen for a moment while he watches the horror quickly unfold as he puts his helmet back on only to have blood-stained water shower down over his head.  War is not meant for heroics and glamorization.  War only serves chaos and brutal death. 

Following this incredible opening sequence, one of the most impressive ever to start a film, Captain John Miller (Hanks) receives orders to locate the titled character, a paratrooper named Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon).  The army insists on sending the young private home to his grief-stricken mother, who has recently lost her other three sons in the conflict.  So, Miller recruits a handful of men consisting of fantastic actors like Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi and Jeremy Davies to make the trek across war torn Europe and rescue Private Ryan before he perishes as well.  How is that really fair though?

Any one of these men are sons to a worried mother back home.  The script for Saving Private Ryan by Robert Rodat has the men question why should they risk their own lives to find this one kid?  What makes him more special than any one of them?  Is the United States Army being fair?  Are they using this special mission as a means of propaganda?  Questions like this are irrelevant to the war department.  Just get him the hell out of there.

The journey of Miller’s squad is not just a simple hike.  At any given moment, they will come across a bombed-out town or another regimen who has just experienced their own kind of hell.  Further questions are asked when Miller recognizes an opportunity to take out an enemy battalion.  His own men suggest circumventing around this potential battle.  Miller won’t hear of it.  He’s a soldier.  Yet, after it is done, there is loss of life.  Should he have listened to their warnings or was he right to engage the enemy to avoid another team of allies suffering a terrible fate? 

Other dilemmas also come into play.  Should they escort a family and their young children who have lost their home?  The brutal dialogue of the script says that’s not their job.  Their goal is to take out the enemy and eventually rescue this one man.  Should an unarmed German prisoner be forced to dig his own grave and later be executed for the atrocities he’s committed?

War tests the ultimate limits of man.  What has to be done to allow us to finally, ultimately and justifiably shed ourselves of our humanity?  A correct answer is never provided in Saving Private Ryan.

Amid a series of astonishing battle scenes and images, two parts of the film stand out for me.  Following the loss of one of their comrades, there is disorder within the ranks.  This is where Tom Hanks takes control of a chaotic scene.  John Miller knows his soldiers have placed bets on what he does for a living back home.  Considering the strategist that Miller shows himself to be, its quite startling to find out what his occupation is.  It’s so surprising that Hanks as Miller uses it to temper his men which segues nicely into why Miller honors the mission assigned to him, even if it means risking his own life.  It’s not the best answer to why one man is more valuable than any other, but it’s the only one we are going to get. 

An even more powerful image comes to mind in the third act.  Jeremy Davies plays a Corporal assigned to the team to be a German and French interpreter.  He’s a soldier in this war, but he’s the last one you would want in combat.  As the American forces await the inevitable arrival of a German tank and a large number of troops to arrive, the men assign Davies to hold on to the long chains of ammunition and artillery.  He is draped in bullets around his neck and shoulders.  As the battle engages, shots are fired in all directions, men are quickly dispatched and Spielberg wisely has his cameras follow a helpless, weeping Davies do nothing but run from one end of the street to the other and up the stairs of a blown-out building.  He has all of the power in the world but he lacks the muster to kill and destroy which is what the nature of war demands.  He can even hear a man slowly die by stabbing in the floor above him. Yet, the Corporal can’t even rush to rescue his friend, and slaughter the enemy.  War destroys, but it also paralyzes man to act beyond an intrinsic nature of peace.  Each time I watch this scene, I can’t get past what this poor young man is truly capable of while being utterly helpless at the same time. 

I found Spielbergian techniques in Saving Private Ryan that hearken back to other celebrated moments in his film repertoire.  Tom Sizemore engages an enemy, only for both of them to run out of ammunition.  So, they wind up clumsily throwing their helmets at each other.  Indiana Jones might have done something like this for the sake of some form of slapstick.  Spielberg applies desperation to this scenario however.

The German tank at the center of the third act is somewhat reminiscent of the shark from Jaws.  Before we get an opportunity to see it, a focused Barry Pepper in a sniper’s bird’s nest gives a visual description of how big it really is and what accompanies it.  Later, Miller and Ryan have taken cover in a trench of rubble only to be overtaken by this beast as it careens over them.  The mouth of its cannon seems to come alive just before it blasts out a tower.  It’s just as scary and shocking as even Spielberg’s pictures of fantasy and adventure came before the release of this picture.  Every shot Steven Spielberg provides in any one of his films build towards an intrinsic and organic response from his viewers.  He always works with that goal in mind.  The tank is the tool used here.

The art direction is fascinating in this film as well.  A knocked over chair is picked up before a soldier stands it up as sturdy as he can on top of splintered wood and crumbled stone.  Sand on the beach is blasted up and out, sometimes splattering the lens of the camera.  Ocean water too.  Pockets of afterburn flames will be seen in the distance of a war-torn area.  The tangibility of these set pieces works cohesively with the distressed colors of a weathered and battle-stricken Europe. 

As chaotic as Spielberg demonstrates war to be, the editing is also commendable.  A war movie like this is not an action picture for the sake of escapism.  We don’t need to see the gun that fired the bullet that pierces the skull of a person.  We just need to see the person get a bullet that penetrates his helmet only to blow his head off to understand the unforgiving nature of war.  A man might be dialing up headquarters requesting air support, but he suddenly will not finish the conversation.  Editing allows the unexpected to become all too common in the midst of battle.

Saving Private Ryan is one of the best films ever directed by Steven Spielberg.  He had already shown real brutality not embedded in fantasy with films like The Color Purple, Empire Of The Sun and especially Schindler’s List.  Yet, with this picture, small factions of men, seeking world conquest, might have started this terrible conflict, but the movie does not concern itself with those instigators.  Instead, we witness the pawns at the disposal of war.  We see the collateral damage that suffer and die at the hands of unseen powers that be.  With Robert Rodat’s script, Steven Spielberg questions the value of one man versus a collection of men, and how any man, who may physically endure this terrible period in time, can also mentally survive long after it is all over. 

THE TRUMAN SHOW

By Marc S. Sanders

Perhaps The Truman Show directed by Peter Weir demonstrates that no matter what time period a person exists in, he/she/they will never be limited to life within a television set.  Life is meant for more than just stories coming from an electric box.

Jim Carrey portrays Truman Burbank who is the star of the addicting and ratings bonanza 24/7 television program known as The Truman Show.  Since his birth, Truman has been observed by the world.  His parents are actors.  His friends are too.  Co-workers and neighbors and townsfolk as well.  His wife Meryl (Laura Linney) is just an actor.  It’s all fake.  Yet, for Truman it’s all real.  He has no idea that he is a worldwide guinea pig meant for complete observation.

Now that Truman is in his thirties, though, he is becoming wise to the fact that something doesn’t feel right.  Every day, for example, is no different than the one before.  It’s all routine.  He kisses his wife on his way out the door.  He waves to his neighbors.  He always teeters on selling an insurance policy to two dweeby twin brothers.  He picks up a magazine at a local stand in the center of his harbor island town.  He responds positively to his boss and then he comes home and mows his lawn. 

It’s only when odd occurrences appear that Truman starts to think and for the television show’s creator, Christof (Ed Harris), that’s a dangerous risk for the longevity of the program.  Christof manipulates everything that happens to Truman thereby manufacturing his fear of the ocean.  An episode from long ago focused on Truman’s near fatal drowning accident with his “father” who went missing.  That fear keeps Truman contained and unable to explore beyond Christof’s inserted limits.  His program allows for sponsorships like the six pack of beer that Truman’s best friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich) always carries or the household products that Meryl uses at “home.”

Peter Weir’s film is concerned with discovery.  Efficiently speaking, he presents the script written by Andrew Niccol with a “how it works” narration as part of a fast moving first act.  When we, the viewers of the film (not the viewers of the show within the film) are accustomed to Truman’s normalcy, then we perk up when we see something out of place like a set door that reveals a backstage catering counter for cast and crew.  We find it amusing when the weather doesn’t work properly and it only rains directly over Truman, and nowhere else.  What would Truman make of a stage lamp falling out of nowhere from a clear blue sky? Christof would not even think to imagine. Even more disturbing is when one of the program’s actors does not cooperate with the illusion, like a girl named Lauren (Natasha McElhone) when she attempts to reveal the truth to Truman as they genuinely become attracted to one another.  Suddenly, “her father” whisks her over to a mysterious place called “Fiji,” and Truman becomes fixated on visiting that locale one day.

Unlike Paddy Chayefsky’s Network, I don’t consider The Truman Show to be brilliantly prophetic.  Ever since the television was invented, we’ve become addicted to the images emanating from the box in the center of our living rooms.  So, I guess I’m not as fascinated with this film as others have claimed.  The viewers depicted in the movie like regular bar patrons, old ladies who are sewing throw pillows and blankets while watching on their sofas, and parking garage security guards working out of their enclosed booth, are hooked.  They’d never even think of falling asleep or changing the channel.  We are not however, and are left with observing Jim Carrey doing another silly role sprinkled with some sensitivity and an intelligence that is slowly becoming aware.

Perhaps Weir and Niccol are toying with the idea of God, and his play toy that he calls man or in this case Truman (True-Man).  God has the will to control a person and keep him contained, but his invention will eventually develop a mind of its own.  Intelligence breeds defiance and a want for freedom.  History continues to show that.  Therefore, man will build up the gumption to sail across the treacherous seas in search of what’s out there beyond what the eye can see.  God will test and test and test.  Man will either pass or fail, again and again.

In this age of endless reality tv programs, far be it for me to say that the set up of The Truman Show is unlikely.  Yet, it still does not seem possible.  It’s ridiculously over the top.  (Watch me eat my words one day.)  So, Peter Weir’s picture is a fantasy, I guess.  However, is it a fantasy I really care about?  Unlike the viewers of the program within the film, I never cared about Truman.  I never cared about Christof, Truman’s antagonist.  I definitely don’t care about the actors in the tv show.  Sure, Niccol’s script is an idea: “What if a guy was born and raised and lived within a television show?”.  However, is this an idea that is worth running through with?  What’s to gain from the picture? I guess I missed a number of episodes or a couple of seasons to empathize or follow the ongoing story. 

Having seen all the episodes of The Sopranos or Breaking Bad or even Cheers and The Big Bang Theory, I was there from the beginning.  So, I was concerned with the outcome of Tony Soprano and Walter White and whether Sam & Diane would make it as a couple.  Truman Burbank is just another Jim Carrey caricature that I just don’t care about.  So, you’ll have to excuse me if I go check out what’s on the other channel instead.  Maybe Jeopardy is on.