One Life (James Hawes, 2023)
One Life, starring Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn, is a British melodrama, based on the life story of the man who went to Prague and saved a lot of (mostly) Jewish children from the hands of the Nazis on the eve of the Second World War.
Hopkins and Flynn both play Nicholas Winton, the first as an older man in the 1980’s and the latter as ‘Nicky’, who made a living as a London broker who in 1938 went on a trip to Prague, where he came into contact with German and Austrian families who had fled the rise of the Nazis and were now living in desperate conditions.
Nicky quickly realized that it was a race against time before the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia as well and he quickly set up team to rescue as many children as possible.
(Not to take anything away from the movie, but at this point I just want to note that this particular story is actually part of the much larger ‘Kindertransport’ story that was happening all over Europe. Go look it up on the Internet, kids!)
It was, and I cannot stress this enough, a truly heroic achievement and Nicky subsequently became Sir Nicholas, and rightfully so, but after the war he was haunted by the thought he hadn’t done enough, because he couldn’t save all the children he had set out to rescue.
It’s a very emotional story, and switching between the two timelines doesn’t distract very much from the ongoing drama director James Hawes (working from a script by Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake) so carefully creates.
And even though Flynn and Hopkins don’t look very much alike, I was able to accept the difference, cause they both play well and there is also an able supporting cast including Helena Bonham-Carter, Romola Garai, Julian Pryce and Lena Olin, who all make the movie worth watching.
There is however, an over reliance on a classical score to add even more feeling to the drama, to the extent that it becomes overly sentimental.
Twenty years ago I would have hated the movie for it, now I’m not so harsh anymore, and I enjoy a good tearjerker as much as the next person, but it stills feels unnecessary manipulative.
Fortunately, the emotional resolution, which involves popular television show That’s Life (something I remember from my childhood) still works.
One Life isn’t a bad movie by any means, but it could have been even better if it had just let the drama speak for itself.