One life
Verdict: A timely tribute to a timeless hero
The European premiere of One Life at the London Film Festival this week was remarkably timely.
James Hose’s drama is about the best of humanity, which arrives as we continue to digest news of the worst of humanity.
More precisely, in the week in which hundreds of Jewish children were massacred, here is the story of the salvation of hundreds of Jewish children, thanks to the tireless efforts of many people, but above all the London stockbroker Nicholas Winton, who played Sir Anthony Hopkins in his old age and Johnny Flynn as a young man.
The film’s title is taken from an old Hebrew proverb that suggests that “if you save one life, you save the world.”
His narrative moves back and forth between the late 1930s and the late 1980s. In 1938 and 1939, we see Winton leading British efforts to get the children out of the Czech capital of Prague ahead of the German invasion that everyone knew was inevitable.
Johnny Flynn as young Nicholas Winton in One Lifetime
Anthony Hopkins plays the elder Winton in the film about the rescue of hundreds of Jewish children
Fifty years later, living in comfortable retirement in Maidenhead, his wife (Lena Olin) encourages him to clear out a pile of old papers, rekindling memories of the eight trainloads of refugees he and others managed to save from the Nazis.
Hopkins gives a wonderful, sensitive performance, and the famous 1988 edition of the BBC’s That’s Life, when Winton sits in the audience unaware that everyone around him are ex-refugee children whose survival he has ensured, is beautifully dramatized.
The actual footage, readily available on YouTube, is deeply moving. But the movie (with Samantha Spiro as a believable Esther Rantzen) somehow makes it an even bigger tearjerker.
Honestly, I was glad the lights didn’t go out too soon. It gave me time to dry.
The dramatic heart of the story is, of course, the monumental effort to get the children out.
In 1938, Winton travels to Prague and convinces the harsh, caustic head of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, Doreen Wariner (Romola Garai), to focus on the most vulnerable.
He also seeks help, in London, from his formidable German-born mother Babette (Empress Helena Bonham Carter).
When she rushes off to speak to a colleague from the Foreign Office, he loftily asks her where she came from. “From Hampstead,” she replies dryly. ‘On the 24 bus.’
Winton’s campaign is soon in danger of being strangled by red tape. The British government insists on a bond of £50, a visa, a medical certificate and the establishment of a host family for each child.
Wynton’s German-born mother Babette is played by Helena Bonham Carter
Winton writes to the Times and offers of help (along with some anti-Semitic hate mail) start pouring in. Meanwhile, his job is in jeopardy.
“Winton, enough heroic work,” thundered a telegram from his boss. It is needed by stock brokerage. But Czech and Slovak youth need him more.
In the end, he and his colleagues get 669 children out, an incredible number, but in his old age Winton’s mind turns to the 250 others who were crammed onto the ninth train, the one scheduled to leave Prague on September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland. It never left the station.
Perhaps wisely, One Life does not dwell too much on Nazi brutality. Indeed, if there is only one villain of the piece, it is, somewhat unfairly, not so much Adolf Hitler as the editor of the Maidenhead Advertiser.
When Winton finally decides to tell his remarkable story and loyally goes to his local paper, the editor refuses because he can’t see the ‘Maidenhead angle’. By the time he realizes what he’s missed, it’s too late.
Director James Hawes, whose credits are mostly on TV (Doctor Who, Black Mirror), does a great job of packing all of this together, aided by a modest script by Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake.
It may all be madness and mayhem, but the story doesn’t need any big cinematic flourishes, and it doesn’t get one.
Still, none of that diminishes the impact of One Life, especially now. Winton died in 2015 at the mighty age of 106. It is reasonable to assume that the events of this week in Israel and Gaza would have broken his heart.
One Life opens across the UK in January.