The Holdovers is a 2023 American Christmas comedy drama film directed by Alexander Payne, written by David Hemingson, and starring Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa in his film debut. Set in 1970, it tells the story of a strict classics teacher at a New England boarding school who is forced to chaperone a handful of students who have nowhere to go during the school's Christmas holiday break. Filming took place from January to March 2022 in Massachusetts. The Holdovers 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.
The film received critical acclaim and grossed $46 million. It was named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute, and received many other accolades, including two wins at the Golden Globe Awards and the British Academy Film Awards; Randolph won the Best Supporting Actress award at both ceremonies. It also received five nominations at the 96th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Giamatti; Randolph won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Plot
In the middle of December 1970, Paul Hunham is a teacher at Barton Academy, a New England all-male boarding school that he once attended on scholarship. His students and fellow teachers despise him for his strict grading and stubborn personality. Dr. Woodrup, Barton's headmaster and Hunham's former student, scolds him for costing the academy money by flunking a major donor's son, causing Princeton University to rescind the boy's offer of admission.
When another teacher becomes unavailable for the duty, Hunham is forced to supervise five students left on campus during the Christmas holiday break, including Angus Tully, whose mother has cancelled a family trip to Saint Kitts in order to honeymoon with her new husband. Also staying behind is cafeteria manager Mary Lamb, whose late son Curtis attended Barton and recently died in the Vietnam War after being drafted. Unlike most Barton students, Curtis did not get a student deferment because he could not afford to go to college, and was only able to attend the school because of his mother’s job.
To the students' chagrin, Hunham forces them to study and exercise during the break. After six days, one student's wealthy father arrives by helicopter and agrees to take all five students on the family's ski trip with their parents' permission. Angus, unable to reach his parents for permission, is left alone at Barton with Hunham and Mary.
When Hunham catches Angus trying to book a hotel room, they argue about Hunham's disciplinarian policies. Angus runs through the school halls and defiantly leaps into a pile of gym equipment, dislocating his shoulder. Hunham takes him to the hospital. To protect his teacher from blame, Angus lies to the doctors about the circumstances of his injury.
At a restaurant, Hunham and Angus encounter Lydia Crane, Woodrup's assistant, who is fond of Hunham and invites the pair to her Christmas Eve party. Angus, Hunham, Mary, and Barton's janitor Danny attend Lydia's party. There, Angus is taken with Lydia's niece Elise, but Hunham discovers that Lydia has a boyfriend. As Mary gets drunk and has an emotional breakdown over Curtis's death, Hunham insists on leaving early. As he and Angus argue, the teen says that his father is dead and Mary scolds Hunham for his lack of empathy. Feeling remorseful, Hunham arranges a small Christmas celebration. Mary persuades him to grant Angus's wish for a "field trip" to Boston. After dropping off Mary in Roxbury to spend time with her pregnant sister, Angus and Hunham walk through Boston, ice skate and visit the Museum of Fine Arts.
The two encounter a classmate of Hunham's from Harvard College, who has become a successful academic. Embarrassed, Hunham lies about his career, and Angus plays along. Angus learns that Hunham was expelled from Harvard after a legacy donor's son accused him of plagiarism, causing Hunham to semi-deliberately hit him with a car. Although the incident nearly ruined Hunham's career prospects, his old Barton headmaster took pity on him and offered him an adjunct teaching job.
When Hunham and Angus see the film Little Big Man at the Orpheum Theatre, Angus sneaks away and Hunham catches him entering a taxi. The teen explains that he wants to see his father, and Hunham agrees to accompany him, assuming that they are going to a cemetery. However, Angus's father is alive and confined in a psychiatric hospital.
Following the visit, Angus (who takes medication for depression) expresses his fear that he will grow up to become like his father. Hunham comforts him, affirming that Angus is not the same person as his father. Hunham, Angus, Mary and Danny celebrate New Year's Eve together.
In January 1971, when school resumes, Hunham is summoned to Woodrup's office, to respond to a complaint from Angus's mother and stepfather. They say that Angus is not allowed to see his father and that a snowglobe Angus had given him led to a violent incident at the hospital. Angus's mother and stepfather threaten to withdraw Angus from Barton and send him to a military academy. Hunham defends Angus and blames himself, claiming that the visit was his idea. Woodrup allows Angus to remain at Barton while firing Hunham, who steals expensive cognac from Woodrup's office as he leaves.
Mary, trying to come to terms with Curtis's death, gives Hunham a notebook for the monograph he wants to write. Hunham and Angus share a heartfelt handshake as they say goodbye to each other. In his car, Hunham takes a sip of the cognac, spits it out toward the school, and drives away.
Cast
Production Development
The Holdovers is the second collaboration between director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti after Sideways (2004). Payne conceived it after watching Marcel Pagnol's 1935 film Merlusse, and contacted screenwriter David Hemingson, whose boarding-school television pilot he had read.
In 2018, Hemingson was running his show, Whiskey Cavalier for ABC and was surprised to receive a call from Payne. The television pilot, Stonehaven, was set in present time, but Payne suggested a film using an older setting instead like 1958 or 1970. Hemingson agreed on 1970 because it had more in common with the present time and 1958 was too close to Dead Poets Society's timeline. In 2024, Hemingson revealed that the film is partially semi-autobiographical, with some of the dialogue and scenes taken verbatim from his own life, such as words from his own real-life uncle. The scene with the sex worker was inspired by a real-life incident that he said actually "happened to me on First Avenue and 30th Street with [my uncle] when I was seven years old. This woman walked up on an incredibly cold day and solicited and said, 'The kid can wait around the corner.' That is an actual incident from my life. The cherries jubilee thing is something that happened to me with my mother. So many of the things in the movie are just a love letter to my mom and my uncle and my dad." In June 2021, Miramax acquired the distribution rights. In early 2022, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Carrie Preston joined the cast.
Filming Filming began in Massachusetts on January 27, 2022, and wrapped in late March. Location manager Kai Quinlan, who had worked on other films set in New England like Spotlight and Black Mass, drew on her Massachusetts upbringing for the film. Similarly, Giamatti drew on his experience attending Choate Rosemary Hall in the 1980s, including his memories of a strict teacher whom he described as "not a happy man." To create the fictional Barton Academy, the film crew shot on location at five real-life Massachusetts schools: Groton School (the chapel and the Nashua River), Northfield Mount Hermon School (the chapel and building exteriors), Deerfield Academy (the front lawn and building exteriors), St. Mark's School (the dining hall, gymnasium, and headmaster's office), and Fairhaven High School (the study hall and auditorium). To play prep school student Angus, Payne cast Deerfield student Dominic Sessa; it was Sessa's first film role. The film crew 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".
Special effects One of the film's plot points involves Paul Hunham's amblyopia (sometimes called lazy eye), one of several health problems the character suffers from. To create the illusion that actor Paul Giamatti had this condition, the makeup and effects artist Cristina Patterson was hired to create special hand-painted soft contact lenses for the actor. Patterson told Vanity Fair writer Katey Rich that each lens required multiple attempts to get the color correct. Originally, Giamatti was to wear a lens only in his left eye, but after filming began, director Alexander Payne decided that he wanted to be able to create the effect in either of Giamatti's eyes so that the character's condition would be apparent with a variety of camera angles and shots. Rich reported that Payne "wanted to keep the audience guessing about which eye was the 'right' one, just as Angus Tully does." When Giamatti was wearing one of the lenses, he was unable to see out of the eye wearing the lens. Giamatti told Vanity Fair that "adjusting to the ways the lens limited me physically gave me a lot to work with imaginatively that I can’t even articulate. And I suppose the eye is one factor among several that makes Paul Hunham feel like he’s kind of an outsider."
Cinematography and post-production To make the film look and feel like it was actually made during the 1970s, Alexander Payne hired Eigil Bryld to serve as cinematographer and camera operator. On being selected, Bryld remarked, "There's a sense of a spirit of the '70s movies — breaking away from your studios. And all the DPs of the period that I really admired would push the film stock or they would do handheld or whatever. And then I started thinking, 'That's really what I should be going for.'" Both digital and film formats were tested prior to filming, before it was decided to shoot the film digitally with an Arri Alexa with Panavision H series lenses, particularly a 55mm lens, creating a "vintage portrait look." "It's a movie about people who are forced into the frame together, and they don't necessarily want to be in the same frame," Bryld added. "Gradually over time, they come together more and more ... And that was one arc we were looking for — how we would reflect that, how we framed it and where we put the camera." Film emulation and color grading were added to the footage during post-production to complete the look.