The Holdovers (2023)

★★★★

The Holdovers is a period drama about a boarding school teacher forced to look after students who can’t go home for the Christmas holidays. Paul Giamatti plays a loathed history teacher Hunham whose lofty academic standards fall afoul of the school’s need to appease the wealthy parents, and as such is left on babysitting duty for the few students who can’t go home. When all but one student is whisked away to go skiing, the one remainer (Dominic Sessa) feels abandoned and imprisoned. Between the cook (Da’Vine Randolph) and the assistant to the headmaster (Carrie Preston), they try to get through to Hunham that the kid is more than just a privileged brat in need of academic discipline, and so Hunham tries to connect with the kid as a human being.

The drama is quiet and personal, and its comedic moments work because of the pathos the script works so hard to achieve. The dialogue is witty. The vicissitudes of life hit each of us in unique ways to make us who we are, and here each character has their own struggle. It’s easy to buy into the connections they form with each other because it feels like it stems from recognising each other’s circumstances. The climax is touching without any danger of becoming hokey. The happiest ending of all is when someone can act with personal integrity in the face of those who see that as a character defect.