The Holdovers is a film full of sharp-edged insults hurled back and forth like spears between Mr. Hunham (Paul Giamatti), an acerbic teacher of ancient civilizations at a New England prep school, and Angus (Dominic Cessa), a troubled teenager Hunham has been tasked with supervising over Christmas break. Hunham calls Angus and his comrades “snarling visigoths” and “rancid little philistines.” Angus tells Hunham that he smells like fish and everyone hates him. It’s the kind of dialogue actors relish, and Giamatti and Cessa sink their teeth into every line like they’re gnawing at an overdone steak.
The line that sticks in my mind, however, is delivered by Da’Vine Joy Randolph with the kind of quiet confidence that makes you lean in so that you don’t miss a word. She plays Mary Lamb, the school’s cafeteria manager who is stuck at school feeding these two man-children. Over a bottle of whiskey, Hunham reveals that he hopes to complete a monograph on Carthage one day, noting, “I don’t think I have a whole book in me.” Mary’s eyes turn softer than usual, and she sighs almost to herself, “You can’t even dream a whole dream.”
On paper, some of the writing in The Holdovers is probably too flowery for its own good, and while Giamatti and Cessa have a great time over-enunciating every bon mot, Randolph takes a different tack, countering their boisterousness with minimalism. Her character is suffering a greater grief than either of these men due to a loss she encountered because of the war in Vietnam. She now lives every day serving rich white kids who will never know such harsh consequences. Many actors would play Mary as a woman bursting with rage at her injustices. Such a tactic would produce a tidy Oscar clip, but it would also throw the movie off balance. As it is, her character’s anger, sadness, and even gratitude are all present and accounted for, but they exist just under the surface, allowing the viewer to discover them on their own and feel more invested in her plight.
Director Alexander Payne and Giamatti collaborated on Sideways nearly two decades ago, and The Holdovers is a neat continuation of their dynamic. If Miles from Sideways never got his act together in the final scenes and moved on to harder stuff, he would have ended up as bitter and alone as Hunham.
Walking into an established director-actor collaboration as is is never simple for an actor outside thay dyamic, but Randolph slides in with ease not by trying to match Giamatti blow for blow, but by drawing the audience towards her with a quiet performance that creates intimacy between her and the audience. From her acid-tipped “Merry Christmas!” to Hunham (when he asks her for a favor on Christmas morning before saying hello) to her explosion of grief, she tends towards the unexpected, giving small moments a unique spin and underplaying the moments of high drama, never yelling to the cheap seats, always drawing the viewer towards her.
It’s not the kind of performance we expect from an actor with roots in the theater. Randolph’s big break came when she was cast as Oda Mae Brown (a character that won Whoopi Goldberg an Oscar) in the Broadway cast of Ghost: The Musical. She auditioned to be the understudy, but her take on the material was so good that she was given the role outright. After being nominated for a Tony, she jumped to Hollywood with small roles in films Mother of George and The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, and recurring roles in the quickly-canceled Selfie and long-running Empire.
It was in 2019’s Dolemite is My Name, however, that she found herself on the silver screen, where she volleys winningly between boisterousness and quiet intimacy. In the film about Rudy Ray Moore and the making of 1975’s Dolemite, Randolph plays Lady Reed, one of Moore’s discoveries and a key figure in both his stage show and the titular film. She shares several scenes with Eddie Murphy, who is giving one of the best performances of his late period, and somehow comes out ahead in every one. Her vocal performance in “Itty Bitty Girl,” a ribald duet with Murphy, is a high point, but she also nails what is arguably the film’s thesis scene, when Lady Reed pulls Moore aside and shares how much his confidence in her has meant. “I ain’t never seen nobody that looks like me up there on that big screen,” she says, nearly breaking down. “I may not be sexy, but I’m a real woman.”
Randolph’s ability to locate her career within the broader struggle for representation is as powerful as it is authentic. “I’m on a quest to illuminate the reality of the human experience,” Randolph stated on the Dolemite press tour. “There are so many unsung heroes and pioneers within many different cultures, especially those of minority groups, which are not even discussed. They’re rendered invisible, like it never happened, and that’s really unfortunate.” She is currently the early favorite for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Holdovers, setting the stage for a difference making acceptance speech that might speak further to these themes.
Randolph’s career has been a study in overcoming enormous odds, from her Ghost audition to her celebrated turn in the TV adaptation of High Fidelity, in which she stepped into Jack Black’s shoes and crafted a performance every bit as indelible. Now she’s entering a new phase in which she’s the favorite rather than an underdog. Will she come out ahead on Oscar night? She hasn’t yet met a challenge she couldn’t best, so there’s no reason to stop betting on her now.