Why Alexander Payne’s favourite directors specialised in comedy
After the recent success of hit TV shows such as The Bear and Succession, a number of discussions have sparked on the correct genre and categorisation of these shows, with some arguing that neither are comedies and some insisting that they are. And while the conversation may appear to be rather tedious, it does raise some interesting points, which is something that director Alexander Payne had many thoughts on after his recent film The Holdovers.
The Holdovers, which reunites Paul Giamatti with Payne after the success of their 2004 film Sideways, also starring Da’Vine Joy Randolph and newcomer Dominic Sessa, follows a teacher, student and cook who are stuck in a boarding school over the winter holidays. As they’re forced to spend time with each other, they bond and connect over their shared pains and regrets, finding comfort, solitude and laughter during a dark time.
While the film has its laugh-out-loud moments, with Giamatti’s character struggling to chase Sessa around the empty campus, prompting ridiculous arguments that feel more akin to the kinds of arguments you’d have with your siblings, the film also has deeply tender moments that highlight the pains and sorrows at the heart of each character; people that are riddled with self-doubt and loathing.
But when asked about his impressive range and ability to capture both ends of the emotional spectrum at the TCM Classic Film Festival, Payne said, “Directors trained in comedy are the ones most adept at drama, most adept at pathos”. Payne listed renowned directors like Leo McCarey, Frank Capra and Yasujirō Ozu as his key influences, who are responsible for It’s a Wonderful Life, An Affair to Remember and Good Morning, all marked by the quotidian of everyday life, with a balance between their comedic timing and slow-burning devastation.
When asked about his statement at the festival, Payne responded, “I’ve actually felt that way for years—that some of the directors most adept at delivering unsentimental emotion and pathos are comedy directors, like the ones you mentioned, McCarey and Stevens and Capra. Let’s put [Charles] Chaplin in there as well, and I would even add Yasujirō Ozu, as there’s a way in which you can watch Ozu’s movies as comedies. Ozu has a really rich sense of humor and even made out-and-out comedies in the early days. There was always a lot of humor in his work, but, of course, no one could make audiences cry like Ozu”.
The balance between light and dark is difficult to find, and not many are able to make it feel so seamless, a masterful puppeteering act of knowing when to create comfort and when to pull it away. But in shows like Succession and The Bear, the comedy is created through this very darkness because, for many hurt people, it’s a way of coping with the pain. Or perhaps it stems from a collective inability to deal with these pains, something akin to the age-old saying that ‘if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry’.
And the same goes for The Holdovers because even when you can feel the yearning for comfort and connection from the characters, with pangs of loneliness so heavy that it feels as though it’s built into the brooding walls of the school, the light is what creeps through – a message of hope beneath it all that outshines everything that came before it.
