One Life | Review

Anthony Hopkins in One Life

City of Lost Children: Hawes Pays Homage to Modest Heroism 

By Nicholas Bell | Published on March 15, 2024

While the reality of subconscious motivation will forever muddy the outwardly pure surface of altruistic actions, director James Hawes aims to showcase the potential authenticity of the social conscience in One Life, a reenactment of Sir Nicholas Winton’s actions on the eve of World War II. Eventually dubbed the ‘British Schindler’ by the press in the late 1980s, Winton risked his life and livelihood when, in 1938, he left behind his comfortable life as a stockbroker to visit Prague, where a surplus of Jewish refugees had migrated after Hitler had demanded the annexation of the Sudetenland into Germany. What began as a one week humanitarian trip would result in Winton spending the next eight months establishing an operation to transport Jewish refugee children from Czechoslovakia to London, altogether saving over 600 children before Hitler invaded Poland, closing the borders indefinitely. And, if not for the intervention of a BBC television program in 1988, the world would have never known of his accomplishments.

At the end of 1938, Nicholas Winton (Johnny Flynn) decides to join his friend Martin Blake (Ziggy Heath) in Prague to assist in Jewish welfare work. Thousands of displaced Jewish families have moved into the city, many who likely will not survive the winter in such ramshackle, unsanitary conditions. While Martin is delayed, Winton becomes the protege of humanitarian Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai), who schools him on the current dismal realities. While Winton has only scheduled a week’s worth of leave from work, he stays longer, collecting data on all the children while tasking his mother Babi (Helena Bonham Carter) back in London with finding out exactly what would be needed for the children to be taken in by British foster parents. What follows is a grueling exercise in bureaucratic red tape, but eventually, they are able to start transporting the children out of Prague. Nearly fifty years later, Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) decides to donate his scrapbook detailing these events to a potential museum, never expecting the reception he will receive.

The first two acts of One Life play the standard timeline of most WWII era melodramas as we wait with dread for Hitler’s violence to descend. Johnny Flynn feels aptly cast as a youthful composite of Hopkins, and shares some intensely administered moments opposite Romola Garai as Doreen Warriner and Helena Bonham Carter as his equally helpful mother (Carter previously worked with Hawes on the 2009 television production Enid, in which she portrayed controversial children’s author Enid Blyton). Hopkins, who also recently starred as Sigmund Freud in Freud’s Last Session (2023), specifically set on September 1, 1939, where a fictional conversation transpires between himself and C.S. Lewis, at first, feels like a dead limb early on in the film. Minor gripes with his wife (Lena Olin, in yet another underwhelming role) suggests he has a tendency for hoarding, holding onto a past he’s never really been able to talk about, partially due to his own humility. A lunch date with his old cohort Martin (now Jonathan Pryce, reuniting with Hopkins after The Two Popes, 2019) motivates him to turn over his scrapbook to Betty Maxwell (Marthe Keller), wife of media mogul Robert Maxwell (father of Ghislaine). Eventually, this leads to his invitation to appear on the BBC series That’s Life!, and it’s here where Hawes’ film suddenly hits on something special. Although it’s produced for sensational effect, the show allows Winton to reunite with one of the children he saved and grants Hopkins the opportunity to emote at last.

While we never really learn much about Sir Nicholas Winton other than his vehemence at proclaiming this was never a story in which he was meant to be the focus, he’s an interesting and powerful case study speaking to the power of doing the right thing.  Winton stayed connected with many of those he saved after the That’s Life! episodes, up until his death at the age of 106. Although One Life doesn’t attempt to really highlight any of the people he saved (more than half who remain untraceable), there were many who would go on to become quite notable (including film director Karel Reisz). While it’s a pleasure to see Hopkins alongside the likes of Olin and Keller, the film’s real profundity exists in spaces where nothing’s being spoken.

★★★☆☆