Alexander Payne makes funny, uncomfortable films about people with convincing excuses for themselves. We rate his sharp ear for self-deception and his kindness towards difficult men, though he sometimes insists on a point his actors have already made.
Fi1m perspective
In Election (1999), Matthew Broderick’s Jim McAllister can make his dislike of an ambitious pupil sound like a reasonable adult concern. Alexander Payne lets him talk, then gives us enough of Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick to see what he is excusing. Witherspoon does not make Tracy sweet for our convenience, and Payne is right to leave her that difficulty. We laughed at Jim, then felt uncomfortable because Broderick made his excuses sound like something we might use ourselves. Payne is a sharp director of people who think they are behaving better than they are.
That sour comedy was already part of Citizen Ruth (1996), his first feature, co-written with Jim Taylor. In their screenplay for Election, the competing voice-overs let characters make a defence while revealing why we should doubt them. Kevin Tent’s brisk editing keeps those accounts moving, and the freeze-frames sharpen the jokes. Payne sometimes adds more emphasis than the actors need, with music and visual punctuation insisting that someone is ridiculous. We would rather he left those moments to Witherspoon and Broderick.
Sideways (2004) supplies the clearest link to the warmer The Holdovers (2023): Paul Giamatti, playing another man who has wasted himself. The intervening films include the family drama The Descendants (2011), set in Hawaii, and the black-and-white road film Nebraska (2013), but this return to Giamatti feels especially fitting. Payne understands the appeal of a sour man gradually managing a small decency. In The Holdovers, the school and the winter of 1970 give that familiar story a different setting, with the shooting, cutting and music all recalling the period. We rate it his strongest film since Sideways, chiefly because the actors make its warmth convincing.
Giamatti and Randolph carry The Holdovers through David Hemingson’s neat lessons about what these people have to teach each other. Randolph makes Mary a person where the script too often treats her as a lesson for the others. When a look has already told us enough, a speech too often follows, and the film runs roughly a quarter of an hour longer than it needs to. Payne’s sympathy works better when he trusts the face in front of him. Start with Election for the sharper comedy; choose The Holdovers for the warmth, provided a little dawdling will not spoil the evening.
Biography
Alexander Payne is an American film director and screenwriter. Born on 10 February 1961 in Omaha, Nebraska, he studied history and Spanish literature at Stanford University and earned an MFA in film at UCLA.
Payne is known for directing Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004), The Descendants (2011), Nebraska (2013), Downsizing (2017) and The Holdovers (2023). He has won two Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Sideways and The Descendants.
