★★★★

Six hundred and sixty nine. That’s the number of, mostly Jewish, children Nicholas Winton helped to save from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War. Accounting for the generations since, the total lives in his debt now exceeds six thousand. And yet, until 1988, virtually nobody knew of his effort. Not until it was splashed in the Daily Mirror and on the BBC. It’s that story, as much as the 1939 narrative, at the core of James Hawes’ One Life, which comes adapted from the Barbara Winton penned biography. Sir Anthony Hopkins plays the elder Winton, the one set for an Esther Ransom shaped surprise on the Beeb’s That’s Life. Johnny Flynn is his junior counterpart of some fifty years prior. The film around them is every bit as moving as you’d expect.

As scribed by Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake, One Life veers on the clinical in approach, with stoic sensitivity overriding historical sensationalism. Hopkins is terrific as the later life Winton – albeit a spring chicken to the 106 year-old who would eventually pass in 2015 – a retiree who stumbles upon his own past when besieged by his wife, Lena Olin’s Grete, to declutter his study.

In said past, Flynn, too, excels. He must, however, contend with an imperious Helena Bonham Carter, who makes no bones of stealing just about every scene she’s in. Bonham Carter plays Winton’s no-nonsense mother and Blighty-based campaign manager, Babette. We may remember Winton as the Kindertransport king but One Life is transparent in showing off the great woman behind the man.

Extreme pains are taken here to assert just how little Winton thought of his own achievements. ‘I’m not a hero’ he states, having earlier decried himself an ‘ordinary man’ amid an army of the ordinary. Later still he will bemoan that none of ‘this’ is about him. There’s truth in that but it would be a grand underselling of Winton’s role in the operation to call him ordinary. In Prague, Romola Garai and Alex Sharp play real-life humanitarians Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick who, though brave, had neither the optimism or gumption to kickstart the rescue before Winton’s arrival. It’s hard to blame them. How hopeless the task must have seemed in the face of imminent Nazi invasion. Nonetheless, the trio would load nine trains with evacuating youngsters. Eight make it.

It would be fair to suggest that the back and forth motion of the film, from past to less-past-past, proves a double edged sword. Each strand is proficiently executed, no doubt, but they’re ill fitting bedfellows. 1988 dulls the impetus of 1939, while 1939 nulls the weight of 1988. Neither quite seems to inform the other. Likewise, the film enjoys only a fleeting relationship with the deeper character of either Flynn’s Winton or Hopkins. Certainly, there’s less of the aching and conflicting nuance so well channelled by Liam Neeson in Schindler’s List, an obvious comparison.

On the flip side, the slow reveal narrative allows for a gentle brewing of the film’s poignance to a point of sharp impact. Hawes infuses his telling with contemporary resonance, all too aware of how a story of children fleeing conflict might relate to modern concerns. Hopkins’ Winton finds himself compelled to share his story owing to a fervent desire to see the lessons of old mistakes learnt in the here and now. Almost four decades on, it’s unclear whether that particular wish will ever be granted. One Life enjoys a notionally happy ending but the tears of 1939, 1988 and 2023 ripple not so far beneath the surface.

T.S.