The phrase “instant classic” is sometimes used too loosely for movies. (Someone, somewhere just saw Moana 2 and thought, “Wow, now this is cinema.”) But some films are worthy of such acclaim, and as the weather gets colder—and the time-honored tradition of watching movies slightly buzzed on eggnog hits its peak appeal—I can think of one film that has truly earned its place as a holiday staple. That’s right, I’m talking about The Holdovers.
Alexander Payne’s 1970s period piece about a curmudgeonly prep school teacher (Paul Giamatti) and the precocious student he’s stuck looking after over Christmas break (Dominic Sessa) was immediately canonized following its wide release in November 2023. Critics called it “the ideal annual holiday revisit” and “a sadsack Christmas classic.”
A year later, the sentiment remains strong. Despite its brief lifespan, the film already feels synonymous with holiday warmth and comfort. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a cup of steamed milk or a Burl Ives Christmas album: the perfect thing to put on when there are cookies in the oven and ugly sweater parties on the horizon. It’s no wonder fans are already itching for a rewatch. (An early snow and the first day of December were, among other events, deemed evidence of the official start to “Holdovers Season.”)
“It’s the kind of film that felt like it had always been there,” says Reggie Uwu, a New York Times culture reporter, who spoke with Giamatti last year about his experience making the film. “The entire aesthetic of it makes it feel like an artifact, even though it was shot in 2022.”
As Payne stated in an interview last year, “To a certain degree, I’ve been trying to make ’70s movies my whole career. But on [The Holdovers], I tried to take it one step further and, to some degree, create the illusion that it was actually made in the ’70s.”
The result is a delightfully meticulous re-creation of the era’s culture and motifs. “It feels wistful,” says Uwu. “This more analogue time—a time before the internet—it’s a time when people were forced to talk to each other, and it’s easy to feel nostalgic for that.”
Indeed, The Holdovers leans on that sense of nostalgia to cement a place in an objectively packed holiday movie landscape. This year alone, Hallmark will release over 30 Christmas flicks. On top of that, The Holdovers has to compete with enduring staples of the genre. We’re talking Will Ferrell in a pointy hat, Jimmy Stewart pleading with angels, a leg lamp covered in fishnet stockings. But where The Holdovers stands out is how it captures that pervasive sense of Christmas nostalgia without adding any glossy cheerfulness.
Interviews With the Creators of ‘The Holdovers’
“The ’70s were the first time that people became cynical—questioning a lot of things that had always sort of been accepted,” says Maureen Lenker, senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. “Right now we’re in a period where a lot of popular things are set in the 1970s and people are gravitating toward that time period. And I don't know if it’s because it's our parents’ time or because of parallels between our contemporary world, but probably some mix of those things.”
By combining wistful reminiscence about the decade—wood paneling, tiny TV sets, even a sexy little Chevy II Nova—with more sobering, timeless themes, The Holdovers feels at once familiar and quaintly detached. It’s the rare film that lets us appreciate and even aestheticize the past without viewing it with rosy retrospection.
For younger generations, there’s comfort in knowing that previous cohorts had their own fair share of uncertainty and upheaval. In The Holdovers, the specter of Vietnam looms painfully over Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), whose son died in battle—he was unable to receive a deferment like his richer (whiter) Barton Academy peers. Sessa’s character, Angus, has a distressing relationship with his father, which illustrates shifting conversations around depression and mental health treatment. Meanwhile, Giamatti’s character, Paul, begins to reckon with his own antiquated ideas and routines, slowly dipping his toes into the loosening social norms of the ’70s.
The film does not ignore the decade’s flaws, exploring themes of race and class through the insular world of its ragtag characters. “It has more of a social conscience than you typically see with films from or about this decade,” says Uwu. “A little more attention given to what was actually going on during the 1970s.” While Payne shows his characters’ moments of triumph and resolve, he also doesn't shy from capturing the inherent sadness of their circumstances. The joy of Christmastime does not erase their brokenness.
Unlike other holiday classics, The Holdovers is not a family story—at least not in the traditional sense. Paul, Mary, and Angus are all estranged from their “real” families in different ways and, as a result, come to form a makeshift family of their own. “This is a group of people who are sort of forced together, and in a school setting, at that. It’s not really something we’ve seen in this genre,” says Lenker.
The film embraces the concept of found family in all its imperfections, subtly conveying the growing fondness that underlines its characters’ interactions and improvised holiday celebrations. Even Paul’s gifting of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius to both Angus and Mary is a surprisingly earnest example of the characters’ developing bonds. Paul is woefully oblivious to his companions’ indifference toward Stoic philosophy, but that he tries at all to connect with them in this manner is evidence of a change in his character; a softening in his attitude toward their shared circumstances. “For my money, it’s like the Bible, the Quran, and the Bhagavad Gita all rolled up into one,” he says to Angus. This is Paul’s expression of affection, and even in Angus’s baffled response (“OK … thanks”) we sense that he, too, recognizes this gesture as an olive branch.
Also importantly, The Holdovers appeals to all age groups, capturing the experiences of multiple generations with equal care and complexity. “That’s a really hard balance to strike, and this movie does it,” Uwu says. “It takes its characters seriously, and it doesn't dumb down or sand off the emotions.” Fifteen-year-old Angus’s struggles are treated with as much credence as Paul’s or Mary’s; his rebellious angst and complicated family life is portrayed—through Sessa’s moving performance and Payne’s direction—with empathy and understanding.
Nate Carlson, who designed the awesome, retro studio logos shown at the start of the film, says it was important to him to capture the film’s universality in these designs, which immediately submerge audiences in its time-warping atmosphere while still feeling novel. (Miramax, unsurprisingly, loved theirs.)
“I’m a child of the ’70s myself, so the aesthetic of that era is ingrained in me, and it was so perfectly captured in the film,” Carleson says. “I wanted to be faithful to that [in the designs] but also craft it so that a younger audience could appreciate it as well. It has resonated with a broad audience, and I’m thankful for that.”
That The Holdovers is at once so nostalgic and so universal is a testament to Payne’s love of his medium; he understands that a film can embody a period of time without mindless devotion to it. “Something that sets the film apart [is that] it’s got a bittersweet ending … it’s more melancholy,” Lenker says. “It leaves you with that sort of sense of sadness or loss, unlike other Christmas films, which tend to clear things up.”
So, if Holdovers Season is already being proclaimed from the rooftops—by Gen Z and Boomers alike—let that stand as a testament to the beauty of a more pensive holiday film than we’re used to. The Holdovers is a period movie that doesn’t revere its setting and, just as notably, is a Christmas movie that doesn’t extol the virtues of Christmas. This is a movie filled with disappointments and disagreements; curses, insults, and dislocated shoulders.
“The humanity of the film—it captures the spectrum of emotions that I think many people experience around the holidays,” says Uwu. “These characters are very different. But they nevertheless come together and find some kinship and some mutual respect, and that idea is a little bit nostalgic. You want to hope that people like this get along and support each other in a time of need.”