One Life (2024)
Nicholas Winton is a stockbroker who’s on his way to Prague around the time that Hitler annexed the Sudetenlands in 1938. He’s appalled when he sees all the refugees, many of them Jewish, living on the streets, waiting in limbo for something to happen, and unless that something involves leaving Czechoslovakia, the road ahead looks bleak, especially for the children.
With the help of Brits who were living in Prague and working to relocate children, as well as Brits back home in England, Winton was able to spirit around six-hundred sixty-nine children out of Czechoslovakia and place them with families in Britain, only stopping when Hitler invaded the country and closed the borders. Winton always regretted not being able to do more, and worried over the children who were still in Czechoslovakia.
There are a lot of heartbreaking moments in One Life, as it accurately recreates the separation of these children from their parents and what happened afterwards. It was no doubt incredibly difficult for parents to wave their children off with such promises as “See you soon,” and “Be good.” The children who were relocated didn’t know when or if they would go back to their homeland, and in more than a few cases, these families were never reunited. Many of the children’s parents died of disease or in concentration camps, while the children they left behind were able to go on living and thriving.
Winton is played as an old man by Sir Anthony Hopkins and as a young man by Johnny Flynn, and goes back and forth between the late nineteen-eighties, when Winton’s story was first made public, and 1938, when the rescue efforts were going on. Both actors play Winton very quietly but forcefully, as befitting a man who found the attention he was getting a little embarrassing, although he certainly seemed glad to know what had happened to the children he helped.
In fact, the whole movie has a very quiet, tranquil tone to it, especially in the first part, and what’s interesting is the contrast between wartime England and England of the nineteen-eighties. In comparison to the former, which is genteel and punctuated by understated, dry humor, modern England seems a wee bit bombastic and almost vulgar, or at least it does until the past and the present form a bridge.
The one real concern I have with this film is, while it’s extremely compelling and heartwrenching, it doesn’t really make the initial stakes clear, namely with how big a deal it was for the Czechs and Slovaks to lose the Sudetenlands in the Munich Pact, a boneheaded move on the part of European nations and Great Britain’s prime minister Neville Chamberlain that left Czechoslovakia vulnerable and enabled Hitler’s territorial ambitions.
It wouldn’t have taken much to fill in the blanks, either—a few less-than-subtle remarks about the political situation from one or more of the characters would have done the trick. Otherwise, seeing as the Second World War isn’t taught much in schools if at all, One Life may just elicit a “So what?” from audience members of a certain age.
Or it could inspire curiosity. I hope and pray that’s the case, because as it’s famously been said, “Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.”
One Life is currently in theaters. Rated PG.
My grade: A+
Principal Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Lena Olin, Johnny Flynn, Helena Bonham Carter, Jonathan Pryce, Tim Steed, Matilda Thorpe, Daniel Brown, Alex Sharp, Jiri Simek, Romola Garai, Barbora Vachova, Juliana Moska, Jolana Jirotkova, Michal Skach, Samuel Himal, Matej Karas, Ella Novakova, Martin Bednar
Directed by James Hawes.
Written by Lucinda Coxon, Nick Drake, and Barbara Winton.