By ALAN SMASON
While the Academy Awards buzz was mostly about “Oppenheimer” and “Poor Things,” a smaller film starring Anthony Hopkins – “One Life” – was distributed a few weeks ago and is still playing if you can find it in area theaters. Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as the aged Nicholas Winton, the now 86-year-old actor delivers a deliberate and understated performance on celluloid that is truly worthy of being seen.
Based on the book “If It’s Not Impossible: The Life Of Sir Nicholas Winton” written by Winton’s daughter Barbara, the film won critical acclaim last year as part of its entry into the international film festival circuit.
In 1939 Nicholas Winton was a British stockbroker and banker with legitimate ties to the people of Czechoslovakia. His Jewish parents had emigrated to England more than three decades earlier, changed their name and converted to Christianity. As the film relates, he and several other socialists located in England and Czechoslovakia were concerned about the threat imposed by the Nazis to the mostly Jewish children in the region. They hatched an ingenious plan to rescue hundreds of them before hostilities began. They took photos of at risk children and arranged to place them in British homes along with a substantial fee required by the British government to defray the costs of returning the children once the threat was over.
Working against the clock, Winton and his allies managed to rescue 669 children, who might not have escaped the Holocaust without their intervention. Two kindertransport trains successfully were able to pass through Amsterdam and on to foster families throughout the United Kingdom. One final train scheduled to leave Prague on September 1, 1939 was cancelled due to the Nazi invasion on that very day. Historic records indicate only two of the nearly 300 children slated to be on the train actually survived the end of the war. Hopkins reveals in his performance as the older Nicholas Winton that it was that last train – the one that never left the station – that tortured him for more than 50 years and made him feel he had ultimately failed his young charges.
Playing the younger role of Winton is Johnny Flynn, a British musician and actor who carries most of the dramatic portions of “One Life,” set in the months and days leading to the Nazi invasion of Poland that was the outbreak of World War II.
The film moves back and forth across time with a half century difference between the actions leading up to the rescue of the children and then the discovery of his heroic actions as part of an investigation over British television in 1988.
In the role of Winton’s determined mother Babi is Helena Bonham Carter. She gives an impassioned performance as a woman who understands the dark antisemitic forces at play and instills in her son the values he embraces that compel him to find a way to save the children, even in the most difficult of circumstances. Flynn’s performance emulates a younger version of Hopkins, but there is also a young vitality and emotional sweep that he brings to the character as he and the others situated in Czechoslovakia work against the system and the clock to give the children a chance at life.
Flynn enjoys excellent screen time in his role opposite Ziggy Heath as his colleague Martin Blake. Romola Garai, as pivotal head of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, also delivers magnificently as the person who convinced Winton of the need for his intervention. The coming crisis and inevitable Nazi invasion weighs heavily on her.
One scene between Hopkins as the elder Winton and Jonathan Pryce as the elder Martin Blake four decades later gives insight as to why it took so long for the story to emerge. Blake tries to encourage Winton, but no matter how much success the two enjoyed, Winton is overcome with personal grief for that train left behind and the 300 souls lost to the Holocaust. It is hard as it it for him to brook any measure of success compared to that tragedy.
Lena Olin, as Winton’s wife Grete, is supportive and caring in her scenes with Hopkins, who is very generous in their scenes together.
The culmination of the film revolves about the British TV program “That’s Life!” that eventually brings Winton’s superhuman efforts to the public’s attention. Historians can attest it was that show which led to his eventual recognition by Queen Elizabeth when she inducted him into the Order of the British Empire. Winton was named a British Hero of the Holocaust and was knighted in 2003 by the queen. Despite what some naysayers will claim as manipulation, the live reveal on camera for Winton’s appearances on the show are accurately replayed in the film.
“One Life” is a fitting tribute to a man labeled as “the British Schindler” by his country’s press and a genuine hero of both Britain and Czechoslovakia. Winton, who died at 106, was a reluctant hero. He wished no fame for himself and the film clearly shows he and others like him were driven by ethics and altruism in a time of infamy and mankind’s nadir of inhumanity to one another.
Directed by James Hawes, “One Life” is currently showing in theaters nationwide.