The Holdovers
Short description
Set at a New England prep school during the Christmas holidays of 1970, The Holdovers follows Paul Hunham, a strict and widely disliked classics teacher who has no family and nowhere to go. He is therefore stuck on campus to supervise the few boys whose parents cannot or will not collect them. After the others leave, only Angus Tully remains, a bright fifteen-year-old whose behaviour keeps threatening his place at the school. The school's head cook, Mary Lamb, joins them as she mourns a son killed in Vietnam, and over a snowy fortnight the three form an unlikely household.
Alexander Payne directed the film from an original screenplay by David Hemingson. It is Payne's ninth feature, arriving after Downsizing and reuniting him with Paul Giamatti, who previously starred in Sideways; Giamatti plays Hunham, while newcomer Dominic Sessa plays Angus and Da'Vine Joy Randolph plays Mary. Supporting roles include Carrie Preston, Brady Hepner and Ian Dolley among a credited cast of forty-six.
Made for about 13 million dollars, the film took roughly 46 million worldwide, a strong return on its budget. On IMDb it holds 7.9 from around 245,000 votes; on TMDB, 7.6 from far fewer. A critics' score of 8.6 from 366 reviews places it above both audience measures.
What's left behind the scenes
- Many scenes were filmed at the Fairhaven, Massachusetts high school during spring break. Fortunately, a snowstorm hit the town during those days, which pleased the film crew, as the plot involves some events taking place during a snowstorm. Therefore, the snow shown in the film is not artificial, but natural.
- While filming the scene where his character calls home, Dominic Sessa "messed up" the take because he didn't know how to use a rotary dial phone and had to be shown. Somehow, it didn't occur to anyone on the film's creative team that he had never used such phones before.
- While filming the scene in which his character calls home, Dominic Sessa ruined a take because he didn't know how to use a rotary phone.
- The opening credits contain a humorous copyright notice stating that the film was supposedly shot in 1971.
- According to Dominic Sessa, the most difficult part for him was filming the skating scene. Sessa used to play hockey, and he found it challenging to fall at the exact moment commanded while making it look natural.
- Despite the visuals resembling films from the 1970s, the film was shot on a digital "ARRI Alexa Mini" camera, and all the characteristic features of shooting on film (image grain, halos, mechanical vibrations of the film as it passes through the camera gate, etc.) were added during post-production.
- The entire film was shot on location – without sets or sound stages.
- Focus Features acquired the rights to the film for $30 million after a showing to potential buyers at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. The film wasn't even on the list of films intended for screening, but the deal still became the largest at the festival.
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