“Those Who Remain” is one of the many fragile stories whispered beneath the ear-splitting machination of various films contending for the top prize on the 2024 Oscars. It is a humane, simple tale that provokes feelings of empathy and despair and eventually soothes us with love.
This film signature walks beside those of Alexander Payne -Nebraska, Sideways, About Schmidt, to mention but a few. Like his other films, the american filmmaker remains at the edge of the humanity and seriousness of the issue at hand and handles the camera like an irritation as she lets her characters develop on their own.
There are essentials in all of Payne’s characters, ‘otherness’, and a ‘suffering’ as a result. There seems to be no novel about the occupation of Paul Giamatti in that film where he plays Paul who works as a teacher in a private boarding school for boys in Massachusetts. At the time of the school break, most of the students and all the teachers get out, except for a handful – those without a home – and Paul is among them. Paul’s job is to take care of these boys but in reality takes care of just one boy – a spoilt daughter of some business tycoon with whom he has vexed in the classrooms & abusing the boy’s mothers as well. Still, Mary, one of the cooks at the school is also in residence.
The film centers on relationships formed among these broken characters, who are soft and vulnerable within but hard and fierce outside. The Vietnam War and a troubled America come in as a background of a crumbling society, putting a dark cloud over the hope of the youth.
For the director it is original approach that, in his discernment, best describes the characters: a young handsome man with everything a woman can provide except for her attention which she spends on her new boyfriend in a summer resort; for a woman who has lost her child somewhere on the streets in the fog; and for a man who apparently does not attract lovers because he has a secret that he does not reveal.
But oftentimes, their differences lead to conflicts, as they attempt to both comprehend each other but at the same time protect themselves against the external threats present. Those Who Stay takes its time to expose how the three of them become connected in a very special way, making the changes in the story and in the characters internal and believable.
This is not the usual plot of a Hollywood movie about teachers who change their students’ lives by extraordinary methods. In this regard, one can say that the character of Paul is far from being extraordinary. One of the strongest advantages of Payne’s cinematography lies in the ability to accurately depict human emotions, rather than unusual storylines and static imagery.
In addition to the romance and the melodrama, the film also contains a lot of philosophy about the dualism of social ties. Which is to say – it is imperative to realize the possibility of love, although the loved one may only bring severe disappointment.