You’d be Forgiven for Thinking One of This Year’s Best Picture Contenders Is From the ’70s
The 2024 Oscars race is really starting to heat up in a big way; with the dynamic duo of Barbie and Oppenheimer having staked their case earlier this summer, the rest of the hopefuls are starting to trickle in with high hopes of snatching some of that sweet November-December ballpark recency bias.
Jests aside, one of those hopefuls is The Holdovers, the incoming dramedy from Alexander Payne that would be the biggest shoe-in in the history of film if awards were decided by the nostalgia factor of certain nominees.
Set in the 1970s, The Holdovers centers on the plight of one Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a curmudgeonly teacher at a boarding school called Barton Academy, who’s tasked with supervising the students who have nowhere to go for Christmas. Stuck at Barton with rebellious student Angus and soft-spoken head cook Mary, Paul will soon find his walls broken down as bonds are formed and wounds begin to heal.
Indeed, anyone who’s happened to catch a glimpse of Payne’s next feature has surely already fallen in love with its charmingly retro ethos, presentation, and storyline, and for Payne, that uniquely-robust style is what he’s been gunning for his entire career.
In a recent interview with Collider, Payne touched on his goal of capturing the vibe of a 1970s film with The Holdovers, noting how he tends to create movies that feel retro just by regularly approaching his craft. This project saw Payne full-send his filmmaking style to the point where The Holdovers isn’t merely ’70s-inspired, but captured through a lens that makes you think it was ripped directly from the era.
If you really, really think that, and you’re not just giving me a compliment — and I do believe you — that’s really the greatest compliment you can give me because that’s what I was going for. To a certain degree, I’ve been trying to make ‘70s movies my whole career. But on this one, I tried to take it one step further and, to some degree, create the illusion that it was actually made in the ‘70s.
Indeed, from the film’s grain, to the set design, to the audio mixing, to the trailer’s “trailer guy” voiceover, right down to the intergenerational, sentimental found-family story it’s looking to tell, The Holdovers had a mission, and it seems like it pulled it off perfectly. And given the soaring reviews the film has managed to score in the process, there will surely be plenty to write home about from within the walls of Barton Academy.
The Holdovers will have a limited theatrical release on October 27 before launching into a wider release on November 10.
(featured image: Focus Features)
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