'One Life' review: Holocaust hero's story told modestly

The cinematic image of children boarding trains in World War II is typically traumatic. But in “One Life,” directed by James Hawes, it is tremendously hopeful, as the children board trains in Prague bound for England, escaping the terrible conditions in the refugee camps and the encroaching Nazi occupation, seemingly steps away from distance.

“One Life” is the true story of Nicholas “Nicky” Winton, a British stockbroker and humanitarian who, in 1939, helped organize the escape of 669 children from Czechoslovakia. Written by Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake, the film is based on a book by Winton's daughter, Barbara Winton, “If It Be Not Impossible… The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton.” The film marks the directorial debut of Hawes, who also made the first season of the Apple TV+ spy series “Slow Horses.”

“One Life” interweaves two periods of Winton's life, 50 years apart. Anthony Hopkins plays Winton in 1987, enjoying a life of quiet retirement with his wife, Grete (Lena Olin). At Grete's urging, while cleaning her office, he discovers her old scrapbook containing the records and remains of her pre-war efforts to help refugee children. His efforts have gone unrecognized in the years since, the children scattered to foster families across Britain, but he remains haunted by their faces, taken in photographs which he pores over with a magnifying glass.

Johnny Flynn plays Winton five decades earlier, a stern, quiet man, the son of German Jewish immigrants who converted to Christianity and changed their last name to assimilate in England. Concerned by reports of the occupied Sudetenland, Winton quits his banking job and meets a friend in Prague to help with the refugee efforts. He immediately becomes involved with the cause of evacuating as many children as he can to England.

The comparison to “Schindler's List” is apt – Winton has been known colloquially as “the British Schindler” – and the film will feel familiar, if not formulaic, because we have seen films like it about World War II and the Holocaust. Hawes uses that iconography without exploiting or sensationalizing the material; The film is emotionally restrained in a way that is almost frustrating at times, but ultimately reflects the character of Winton's quiet and modest personality.

As Hopkins' Winton wonders what to do with his scrapbook, it's the other people in his life, including his old friend Martin (Jonathan Pryce) and others like Elizabeth “Betty” Maxwell (Marthe Keller), a Holocaust researcher and wife of infamous media mogul Robert Maxwell, who emphasize the important humanitarian achievement she spearheaded. In fact, it wasn't until Winton appeared on a surprising 1988 episode of the British talk show “That's Life!” He is able to understand the sheer human impact of his efforts and the emotion from him begins to seep through.

There is a soft, understated but profound beauty in Hawes' work. The Pre-War Timeline is the kind of solid World War II-era cinema we've come to expect, performed with heartwarming authenticity. As audience members, we long for a little more naked emotion or even personal motivation from young Nicky (Flynn's performance is quieter than ever). But Hawes and the screenwriters avoid delving into psychological investigations.

They seem less interested in why Winton did it and more in simply what he did. Bound by certain inherent values ​​of decency and kindness instilled in him by his mother (Helena Bonham Carter), he applied his knack for paperwork to the logistical nightmare that was getting these children out of a terrible situation. He and his friends, Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai) and Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp), describe themselves as just ordinary people who gather an army of ordinary people to do something not only good but to save lives. of innocent children caught in the jaws of war. .

“One Life” is a slow burn that slowly establishes Winton's modest character as a younger and older man, but when it opens, it is a deeply moving portrait of true human goodness. The emotional resonance comes not from the dramatic events of the war, but rather from the long-term effects of Winton's efforts many years later. His story shows that a few months of helping others can become generational legacies, that 600 souls can become 6,000, and that one life can have a lasting impact on the world.

Walsh is a film critic for the Tribune News Service.