The story about British humanitarian Nicholas Winton lands the silver screen, through the biographical drama that had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and its European premiere at the 2023 London Film Festival.
One Life retraces the true story of Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton, a young London broker who during the months preceding the outbreak of the Second World War saved 669 refugee children from certain death. The young Nicholas Winton is played by Johnny Flynn, whilst our trip down memory lane begins with the elderly humanitarian who remembers his past, who is played masterfully by Anthony Hopkins. The film also stars Lena Olin, Romola Garai, Alex Sharp, Jonathan Pryce and Helena Bonham Carter in supporting roles.
The film will inevitably bring back to mind Steven Spielberg’s award-winning film Schindler’s List, about a German industrialist who saved more than a thousand mostly Polish–Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. In One Life the children who are saved are also from Eastern Europe — from what used to be Czechoslovakia — and the reconstruction of the real life events is rendered with utmost grace. What makes the story about the ‘British Schindler’ even more extraordinary is not only connected to his efforts of the years 1938-1939, but what happened fifty years later. During the Eighties, a BBC television programme called That’s Life! shared his incredible story and reconnected him with some of the children he saved.
The British film director James Hawes finds the proper approach in bringing this story to the big screen. His work has ranged across high-end period pieces and prime-time adventure dramas, for networks on both sides of the pond. Hence, he masters a universal grasp in conveying uplifting stories of bygone eras that can still inspire our modern time.
One Life craftily adapts the biography If It’s Not Impossible…The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton written by Barbara Winton, daughter of the humanitarian. She sifted through her father’s papers and talked to family and friends to construct a detailed account of his whole life. Just like the inspiring book, the film uses some of Nicky Winton’s words, to convey the atmosphere of many of his challenging feats. The picture has an exceptional way of exploring the influences on the protagonist’s character, as well as the historical events he was caught up in. The narrative choice of proceeding on two parallel temporal dimensions works effectively. The two distant narrative arcs, fully capture the benevolent nature of the protagonist who experiences his deeds in his youth and his old age as the most natural and unheroic matters, showing us how they are duties we should give for granted.
One Life is an epic story of courage and compassion, that bestows an inspirational message of how any human being has the potential to change the world for the better. Still today, the world is experiencing warfare and global conflicts and true stories like the one of Nicky Winton — that are shared through the cinematic medium — come through as aspirational. Stories like these still makes us believe, more than ever, in humanity.
Final Grade: B+
Photo Credits: Eagle Pictures