The Holdovers is a 2023 American comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne, written by David Hemingson, and starring Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa. Set in 1970, it follows a curmudgeonly history teacher at a New England boarding school who is forced to chaperone the handful of students with nowhere to go over Christmas break.
It premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2023, and was released in the United States by Focus Features on October 27, 2023. It received acclaim from critics and has grossed $15 million.
Plot
In December 1970, Paul Hunham is a strict, hidebound classics professor at Barton Academy, the New England boarding school he once attended. Disliked by students and fellow faculty, Hunham is forced to supervise the "holdover" students left on campus for the holidays, including Angus Tully, whose mother has abruptly planned a honeymoon with his new stepfather. Also staying behind is cafeteria administrator Mary Lamb, who is grieving the loss of her son, a Barton alumnus killed serving in Vietnam.
Hunham imposes studying and exercise on the holdovers' break, much to their chagrin. After six days, a holdover's wealthy father arrives via helicopter and agrees to take all the students on the family's ski trip. Angus is unable to reach his parents for permission, leaving him alone at Barton with Hunham and Mary. Hunham catches him calling for a hotel room, leading to a chase around the school until Angus defiantly leaps into a pile of gym equipment, dislocating his arm. At the hospital, Angus lies to protect Hunham from blame, and Hunham rescues Angus from an argument with a disabled war veteran at a restaurant.
On Christmas Eve, Angus, Hunham, Mary, and Barton's janitor Danny attend a party held by school office administrator Lydia Crane. While Angus flirts with Lydia's niece over finger painting, Hunham is disappointed to discover Lydia has a significant other, and an inebriated Mary breaks down over her son's death. Hunham insists on leaving early, despite protests from Angus, who angrily reveals that his father is dead, and Mary chastises Hunham for his insensitivity.
Hunham puts together a small Christmas celebration and, with Mary's persuasion, grants Angus's wish for a "field trip" to Boston. Dropping Mary off in Roxbury to spend time with her pregnant sister, Angus and Hunham bond over various activities in Boston, including a museum visit and ice skating. They bump into a classmate from Hunham's Harvard days, now a successful academic, prompting Hunham to lie about his own career as Angus plays along. Hunham reveals to Angus that he was expelled from Harvard after being framed for plagiarism by the son of a legacy donor, which ruined his career prospects and forced him to return to Barton as a teacher.
While catching a film at the Orpheum Theatre, Angus sneaks away but is quickly caught, and explains that his father is actually alive, confined at a nearby sanatorium. Hunham takes Angus to see his father, whose mental illness drove his family apart, and reassures Angus that he can become his own man. The two join Mary and Danny to celebrate New Year's Eve by watching the Times Square ball drop on TV and setting off a firecracker in the school kitchen.
When school resumes after the holidays, Angus's mother and stepfather arrive at Barton, and Hunham is summoned to the headmaster's office. It is revealed that Angus's visit to his father was against his mother's wishes, and that he gave his father a snow globe stolen from Lydia's party, leading his father to have a violent episode. This is the final straw for Angus's mother, and his stepfather is prepared to send him to military school, but Hunham stands up for Angus and takes the blame for the trip. He is fired, but Angus is allowed to stay at Barton.
Mary, who has come to better terms with her son's loss, gives Hunham a notebook for the monograph he has long wanted to write, and he and Angus share a heartfelt goodbye. Leaving the school, Hunham drinks the fine cognac he stole from the headmaster, before spitting it out and driving away.
Cast
- Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham, a classics teacher at the Barton Academy boarding school
- Dominic Sessa as Angus Tully, a Barton student left on campus during Christmas break
- Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Mary Lamb, Barton head cook and bereaved mother
- Carrie Preston as Miss Lydia Crane, a Barton faculty member
- Brady Hepner as Teddy Kountze, Angus's enemy; one of five holdovers
- Ian Dolley as Alex Ollerman, the son of Mormon missionaries; one of five holdovers
- Jim Kaplan as Ye-Joon Park, an international student from Korea; one of five holdovers
- Michael Provost as Jason Smith, the Barton football team's quarterback; one of five holdovers
- Andrew Garman as Dr. Hardy Woodrip, the headmaster of Barton Academy
- Naheem Garcia as Danny, a Barton janitor
- Stephen Thorne as Thomas Tully, Angus' institutionalized father
- Gillian Vigman as Judy Clotfelter, Angus' mother
- Tate Donovan as Stanley Clotfelter, Angus' stepfather
- Darby Lily Lee-Stack as Elise, Angus's romantic interest
Production
The Holdovers is the second collaboration between director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti after Sideways (2004). Payne conceived the film's concept after watching Marcel Pagnol's 1935 film Merlusse,[4] and contacted David Hemingson to write the screenplay, which was originally a writing sample for a television pilot.[5] In June 2021, Miramax acquired the distribution rights.[6] In early 2022, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Carrie Preston joined the cast.[7][8]
Filming began in Massachusetts on January 27, 2022.[9][10][11] Location manager Kai Quinlan, who previously worked on other New England-set films like Spotlight and Black Mass, drew on her Massachusetts upbringing for the film.[12] For the fictional Barton Academy, five Massachusetts schools were used as locations: Groton, Northfield Mount Hermon, Deerfield Academy, St. Mark's School and Fairhaven High School.[13] (Dominic Sessa, starring in his first film role as Angus, attended Deerfield in the class of 2022.)[14] The film also shot at the historic Somerville and Orpheum theatres, and on the Boston Common. Payne later said that capturing the 1970s aesthetic was relatively easy because "change comes slowly to New England".[15]
Music
Original music for The Holdovers was composed by Mark Orton. It also features several classic Christmas songs, and other songs from the 1970s by The Allman Brothers Band, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Labi Siffre, and Cat Stevens. The soundtrack was released digitally by Back Lot Music on November 10, 2023, and on compact disc and vinyl on November 17.[16]
Release
A special screening of the film was held for buyers on September 11, 2022. The next day, it was reported that Focus Features had acquired distribution rights for $30 million.[17] The film was scheduled for a limited theatrical release on November 10, 2023, followed by wide release on November 22.[18] However, it was pushed up to a limited release on October 27, followed by a wide release on November 10.[19] It is scheduled for release in the United Kingdom by Universal Pictures UK on January 19, 2024.[1]
The Holdovers's world premiere was held at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2023.[20][21] It also screened at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2023, where it was runner-up for the People's Choice Award.[22][23] It was also invited to be shown in the 28th Busan International Film Festival's 'Icon' section, where it was screened on 7 October 2023.[24]
Reception
Box office
The film made $211,093 from six theaters in its opening weekend, an average of $35,082 per venue.[25] It expanded to 64 theaters in its second weekend, making $599,833.[26] It then made $3.2 million from 778 theaters in its third weekend.[27] Continuing to expand, it made $2.7 million in both its fourth and fifth weekends.[28][29]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 234 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Beautifully bittersweet, The Holdovers marks a satisfying return to form for director Alexander Payne."[30] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[31] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave it an 80% overall positive score.[29]
Wesley Morris of The New York Times praised Giamatti's performance as well as Payne's direction, writing that, "even as the story accrues the heft of personal tragedy, each scene seems to float or bob."[32] Patrick Ryan, writing for USA Today, compared the film to Frank Capra’s It's a Wonderful Life, noting that both films grapple with troubled pasts and shattered dreams at Christmastime.[33] Critics have also compared it to the films of Hal Ashby such as Harold and Maude and The Last Detail.[34][35]
Reviews in The Boston Globe and Boston.com both praised the film's setting in 1970s New England.[35][36] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post wrote that the film "doesn't only have the look and feel of that time period, it resuscitates the finest elements of its narrative traditions".[37] Richard Brody writing for The New Yorker described The Holdovers as "a pile of clichés" but one realized "with such loving immediacy that it feels as if Payne were discovering them for himself". Brody was more critical of the time period, arguing that the "hermetically sealed, historically reduced drama" ignored the politically fraught setting of the 1970s.[38] Nonetheless, Michael Schulman, another writer for The New Yorker, included Giamatti, Sessa and Randolph in his list of the year's best performances and considered the latter "in a prime position for the Best Supporting Actress race."[39]
Justin Chang of The Los Angeles Times praised the "enveloping sense of time and place," but criticized the film as a whole as being "a flat, phony, painfully diagrammatic movie masquerading as a compassionate, humane one". Chang said that Mary Lamb, despite Randolph's affecting performance, was "somehow the movie's most under-developed role".[34]
Accolades
| Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Nominee(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto International Film Festival | September 17, 2023 | People's Choice Award | The Holdovers | Runner-up | [23] |
| Heartland International Film Festival | October 5, 2023 | Pioneering Spirit: Rising Star Award | Dominic Sessa | Won | [40] |
| Montclair Film Festival | October 30, 2023 | Audience Award - Fiction Feature | The Holdovers | Won | [41] |
| Gotham Independent Film Awards | November 27, 2023 | Outstanding Supporting Performance | Da'Vine Joy Randolph | Nominated | [42] |
| San Diego International Film Festival | October 22, 2023 | Audience Award - Best Gala Film | The Holdovers | Won | [43] |
| Celebration of Cinema & Television | December 4, 2023 | Supporting Actress Award (Film) | Da’Vine Joy Randolph | Won | [44] |
| Santa Barbara International Film Festival | February 10, 2024 | Virtuoso Award | Da'Vine Joy Randolph | Won | [45] |
| New York Film Critics Circle Awards | November 30, 2023 | Best Supporting Actress | Won | [46] |
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