The Holdovers
2023 · Directed by Alexander Payne
Original language: English
- drama
- comedy
The story
A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam.
What it’s like
Warm lamplight against cold grey winter, and a palette that leans into muted browns, faded tweed, and snow-dulled New England light. Alexander Payne frames his 1970s prep school with an old-fashioned, unhurried eye: wide compositions of the empty campus, corridors and dining halls lit by yellowed bulbs, the film-grain texture of a period that feels lived-in rather than styled. The score is sparse and wistful, with soft piano and the occasional jaunty period needle-drop cutting through the hush. Sound is often just radiators knocking, snow crunching underfoot, and the clink of a drink. The mood is wintry melancholy softened by dry, sharp humour, a bittersweet mix that suits a slow Sunday afternoon, a long winter evening, or a quiet holiday night in. The pace is deliberate, letting awkward silences and small gestures breathe, and the emotional arc follows three lonely people, one embittered, one bruised, one grieving, slowly and reluctantly finding warmth in each other. Violence is absent; there is some drinking, a glimpse of grief, and a few tense, uncomfortable moments of teenage rebellion, with no gore and no sexual content. It is for people who want a tender, character-driven film about loneliness and unexpected kinship, with grown-up humour and no real menace.
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