2024-01-04 23:01:49
There are directors who have the gift of making difficult things seem easy. Alexander Payne is one of them. When you see his films you notice that everything flows, that everything is natural, organic. Of unique elegance and simplicity. Simplicity is often confused with simplicity, but it has nothing to do with it. What Payne demonstrates in film after film is a mastery of tempo, dialogue, but above all, tone, which makes him a master. One of those that, furthermore, does not have the need to constantly vindicate itself with virtuoso camera movements, with long sequence shots or with egomaniacal feature films. However, his works always have a unique stamp. It is known that they are his.
It was complicated that in a career that has delivered films like The descendants o Nebraska, excellence continues to be scratched. But Payne continues to do his thing and now he has done it again with Those who stay, a film that is among the best of his filmography and that should be (and will be) in all the important categories of the next Oscar Awards. A film that many have described as a Christmas classic when it is much more than that, when Christmas is the least of it, or just a perfect time frame to develop a story where he once again confirms himself as the director who best knows how to convey a humanistic and of tenderness.
The story of this cantankerous teacher, who is left in charge of the students who have no one to spend Christmas with at an elite school in the 70s in the USA; joins that of a student whose mother has gone with her new traveling partner and the black cook who has lost her son in Vietnam. The relationship between all the characters, full of love, fine irony and brilliant details is what grows until reaching a climax that moves you to tears. For Payne, one scene (that discovery that two characters take the same medicine) is enough to create a bond without the need to underline. Those details (“entre nous”) so typical of Alexander Payne and so great that they make one feel part of that group.
There is, as always, much more than a pretty movie in Those who stay. It always happens in Payne’s films. The descendants He talked about urban speculation and heritage under his personal story; and Those who stay It talks about privilege, class differences and a country always marked by wars. Wars that leave mothers without children and women without husbands. A generation of women marked by the decisions of a country that leaves them behind.
Those who stay It is also a tribute to 70s cinema, with Hal Ashby at the helm (and there is the Cat Stevens song to underline it). And yet it becomes a song against nostalgia. The film talks about how we must understand the past, our history (it is no coincidence that the main character teaches the history of Ancient Rome and says phrases in Latin), in order to move forward. They leave the past behind and move forward. They help each other look to the future because it is the only way.
As always in his films, there are outstanding performances at the center that support everything. Payne is a transparent staging director who relies on his actors. His discovery of Dominic Tessa (incredible that it is his first role) is to bring you to your knees. One of those actors with an unusual physique whose charisma is indescribable. The bet on Da’Vine Joy Randolph is on track to bring her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and Paul Giamatti should win Best Leading Actor for this character who hides behind rigidity and rules but who little by little is showing the goodness of him.
The Giamatti-Payne union
Paul Giamatti and Alexander Payne had already worked together. It was in 2004, in Between glasses, the film that placed the actor in the spotlight of Hollywood and that gave Payne an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Giamatti, despite being one of the favorites, was ignored in the nominations of that edition, something that does not seem to happen to him this year, where he is once again in all the predictions for a Hollywood Academy Award that is still it resists him.
Almost 20 years have passed since that collaboration, and Giamatti says that Payne has directed him in this feature film “in a different way.”
“I don’t think it’s necessarily because he has changed, but rather that this was a different film, with things from the 70s cinema. When we made Between glasses everything was much more flexible. There were several cameras, they all had microphones, and this was the complete opposite. It was much more formal because I was making a ’70s movie, and it had a real focus on pacing to keep it moving in a different way. But still she felt like she was the same person. His approach is still very relaxed and very fun. Regarding me, I think that now I feel more in control of certain things. I guess I’m a better actor, and I definitely relax more,” explains the performer, who this year has also been in the second season of 30 coinsthe series by Álex de la Iglesia.
For Giamatti, the feature film “looks at the past” in an aesthetic way, but not because it is “a nostalgic trip nor does it fetishize that past.” “There are bell-bottoms, big ties and shirts with huge collars, but it doesn’t emphasize all that. I’m not interested in nostalgia. I can feel that nostalgia for those movies, but we wanted to make one that resonated in the present. Then it turned out that it is set in the 70s, but it doesn’t dwell on it or sentimentalize it. It always undermines that in some way, so I think it’s not a nostalgic work and I don’t feel nostalgic at all,” he says.
He humorously says that he prefers a wax statue to a “golden statuette,” referring to the Oscar for which he is considered one of the favorites. He also acknowledges that there were times where he thought he did not compensate him.
“I think all actors have a moment when you think you’re sick of this. It may be because you feel underestimated, because you don’t get projects that you consider attractive, or simply because none come to you. A long time ago I had one of those moments where I felt like I didn’t want to do this. “I didn’t want to continue because it was going to be too difficult, but I think that happens to all actors,” he points out before concluding the anecdote by realizing that being an actor is “the only thing” he knows how to do. A project always appeared that made him continue, that made him not give up and that led him to this project that will remain as one of his best roles.
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