The Holdovers

As we approach October, the all-important holiday release window has appeared on the horizon. The Holdovers might be one of the first to take over that all-important time on the theatrical calendar, aiming for an initial release in mid-November.

The first bit of music appears diegetically, with an ancient-civilization teacher at a prep school whistling a segment from Richard Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries”. This seems to signify the exam result that’s about to land on a student’s desk like a bomb. “Valkyries” re-entered the public consciousness as a war tune in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1978); it’s probably more than coincidental that The Holdovers takes place during the Vietnam War. The graphic presentation of titles also suggests the film’s origins in a different era. What happens next even more firmly situates the trailer in an early 1970s setting, with “Glad” by Traffic (1970) underpinning a more carefree tone, along with the entrance of a gravelly-voiced narrator. Such a narrative style was of course common in trailers of a different era, now reading like a distinct throwback (and one that has certainly been used before recently). A solid minute of one-liners from Paul Giamatti (as the teacher) ensues, as the instrumental by Traffic holds it all down. The music is abruptly cut short at 1:07 when a student shouts, declaring his father’s dead.

In fulfilling the multi-cover style of comedy trailers, Damien Jurado’s folk-tinged acoustic number “Silver Joy” (2014) leads us through the next segment. We see the teacher and student—who must stay at the prep school over the holidays, hence the movie’s title—grow in both their honesty and respect for each other. At 1:44 we’re back to more vintage musical fare with Badfinger’s “No Matter What” (1970) and return to comedy trailer tropes, including one-liners and some physical comedy as well. As with the previous track, the lyrics of the song hold relevance to the feeling here. It seems pretty well established that this is a feel-good comedy about getting through a difficult time together, and the interest here is not so much in what happens as how it happens.

The Holdovers’ trailer isn’t especially clever in terms of synch points or other frame-by-frame approaches to editing the soundtrack with the visuals. However, there’s no doubt the musical choices—either true 1970s fare, or at least songs of a 70s-adjacent aesthetic—work with the inclusion of an old-school trailer narrator’s voice to push the audio viewer’s nostalgia buttons. Sometimes, in a world (pun intended) where every action on screen has to coincide with the beat in a trailer, going the other way entirely and bringing back older music and techniques can feel distinctly refreshing.

The Holdovers arrives in theatres November 10th.

— Curtis Perry