Why The Holdovers Will Win Best Picture
'Tis the 10 days before the Oscars, and no less than 10 films are ramping up their campaigns in a last-minute push for the top prize of them all, Best Picture. The biggest award has the potential to be either one of the most anticlimactic or most surprising result in recent years. The former is true, because one film has won the vast majority of the top prizes on the awards circuit thus far, the gargantuan Oppenheimer. However, not only would the 3+ hour, half black-and-white, half color biopic be a wildly abnormal winner, few if any other top contenders are traditional 'Oscar bait,' and none also are without its detractors.
Those facts, as well as the Oscars' less predictable preferential voting system means that no nominee can truly be counted out of the race. Spotlight's and Moonlight's back-to-back upsets in 2016 and 2017, Parasite's stunner in 2020, and CODA's late surge in 2022 all taught us to expect the unexpected, so we're here to give fans of all 10 nominees reason to believe on Sunday the 10th.
Alexander Payne is no stranger to the Academy Awards, having twice been nominated for Best Director and thrice for Best Adapted Screenplay, winning the latter on two different occasions (Sideways in 2005 and The Descendants in 2012). However, it's safe to say he had been in a bit of a career slump over the last decade- the only film he had put out since 2013's well-received Nebraska was 2017's Downsizing, which was met with a very muted response from audiences and critics alike. Well, with The Holdovers, Payne has definitely rediscovered the juice; his comedy-drama landed 5 Oscar nominations (bettered by just five films), including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and of course, Best Picture.
The Holdovers tells the story of a group of boys, one rapscallion in particular, forced to stay at their boarding school over Christmas break in the 70s, and a teacher, played by Paul Giamatti, tasked with the unfortunate job of being their caretaker for the holiday season. If this strikes you as more of a 'rent to watch with the family at home' film than a box office blockbuster, you would be correct. It did not exactly set theatres on fire, and was streaming on Peacock shortly after its wide release. That said, it's clear making major dollars was not this film's intent, and yet it still well outpaced box office projections, helped in no small part by a 500+% boost after the movie's Oscar nominations. It was also near-universally acclaimed by critics, registering an 82 on Metacritic and popping up on many a year-end list. While its wins on the awards circuit this year have largely been confined to acting awards and the occasional screenplay recognition, it has been in the field for Best Film at just about every major awards ceremony including some of the most predictive awards shows for the Oscars.
Simply being in that conversation isn't everything, but it's also not nothing, and The Holdovers has consistently been in in the conversation this circuit. After all, plenty of movies have been nominated at almost every major awards show only to not win Best Picture, but save for the occasional shock (cough, Green Book, cough) hardly ANY Best Picture winner has been one that isn't in much awards contention prior to the Oscars. What's more, this movie has the strongest acting contenders at the Oscars of any nominee, apart from betting favorite Oppenheimer: Giamatti has a very real chance at upsetting the latter's Cillian Murphy for Best Actor, and DaVine Joy Randolph is the runaway favorite for Best Supporting Actress. Throw in a genuine breakout star turn by young Dominic Sessa, and a widely respected but rarely awarded director in Payne, and you're pushing down a lot of storyline levers the Academy admire.
But in truth, the strongest argument Holdovers has for its Best Picture credentials is simply the movie itself. Both in the film's styling and in its tone and dynamic, it feels like a throwback to the movies of years past, and perhaps even an homage to some unmistakable influences. Perhaps especially because it's set in 1970s America, it’s hard not to feel the ache of nostalgia watching this simple, bittersweet story. Its easy crowd-pleasing nature makes it a formidable contender in a ranked-choice voting system; it's not at all difficult for me to see a scenario in which neither Oppenheimer nor other nontraditional strong contenders earn enough first-place votes to win on the first ballot, and as more and more nominees get the axe, a non-divisive, crowd-pleasing movie likes this gets the points needed to pull off a surprise win.
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