One Life and British cinema’s nos­tal­gia for World War Two

A lot of con­tem­po­rary British cul­ture is tied to the Sec­ond World War. Despite being one of the dark­est times in mod­ern his­to­ry, it’s also one of the most cel­e­brat­ed and talked about, held up as an exam­ple of nation­al resilience and democ­ra­cy. Every year on the 6^th of June we remem­ber D‑Day and every sec­ond Sun­day in Novem­ber memo­r­i­al events all over the coun­try recog­nise Remem­brance Sun­day, held in com­mem­o­ra­tion for ser­vice peo­ple killed in both World Wars and sub­se­quent con­flicts. Images of the Sec­ond World War are every­where in our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry even for gen­er­a­tions removed, from spe­cial days ded­i­cat­ed to its mem­o­ry to books, films and TV shows.

In recent years there has been an influx of British movies focus­ing on the Sec­ond World War in some man­ner, with Joe Wright’s Dark­est Hour and Christo­pher Nolan’s Dunkirk being just two of the most notable exam­ples, and Oper­a­tion Mince­meat (2021), Munich: The Edge of War (2021) and The Great Escap­er (2023) fur­ther evi­dence of the endur­ing obses­sion. Most recent­ly, One Life (2023), direct­ed by James Hawes and star­ring Antho­ny Hop­kins, does the same thing. Inter­est­ing­ly, such a strong focus on the Sec­ond World War is not new in the film indus­try; depic­tions of the con­flict on screen were promi­nent from the very begin­ning of the war. As recent box office results show, war films have always proven to be pop­u­lar amongst British audi­ences; One Life opened sec­ond at the UK box office in January.

One Life is a bio­graph­i­cal dra­ma based on the true sto­ry of Sir Nicholas Win­ton, a British human­i­tar­i­an who helped res­cue 669 chil­dren from the Nazi-occu­pied Czech Repub­lic (then Czecho­slo­va­kia) just before the offi­cial out­break of the Sec­ond World War. The film alter­nates between two dif­fer­ent time­lines, one fol­low­ing 79-year-old Nicholas Win­ton (Antho­ny Hop­kins) who is rem­i­nisc­ing on his past, while the oth­er fol­lows Nicholas 50 years pri­or (played by John­ny Fly­nn) as he decides to save the refugees he encoun­ters by col­lect­ing dona­tions and relo­cat­ing them to Eng­land where local fos­ter fam­i­lies will wel­come them.

As One Life is based on a real-life sto­ry, it main­tains a pre­tence of objec­tiv­i­ty and neu­tral­i­ty in the way it tells its sto­ry. The use of inter­ti­tles before the movie begins is just an exam­ple of this as they evoke an idea of doc­u­men­tary-like impar­tial­i­ty in the way the film sets its his­tor­i­cal con­text at the begin­ning. Despite its inten­tion of authen­tic­i­ty, how­ev­er, One Life ends up por­tray­ing a biased and edit­ed ver­sion of his­to­ry, in par­tic­u­lar regard­ing the role that the Unit­ed King­dom had in the larg­er conflict.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, British war films seem to over­play the role that the Unit­ed King­dom had in the war. This can be seen in Oper­a­tion Mince­meat when one of the char­ac­ters implies that the fate of the free world is depen­dent on the suc­cess of their mis­sion and, there­fore, sole­ly on the British war effort. The Dark­est Hour sug­gests the same idea with Churchill appear­ing entire­ly respon­si­ble for stop­ping Hitler. While it is true that the coun­try played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the con­flict, espe­cial­ly in the first half, it seems like an exag­ger­a­tion to por­tray Britain as the only pow­er that can oppose the often elu­sive and hard­ly ever men­tioned ene­my. But hav­ing the coun­try depict­ed as the only glob­al pow­er left stand­ing in the face of Hitler and Nazism makes for a much more com­pelling nar­ra­tive and one that is instru­men­tal to the way the coun­try wants to be seen in the present.

As One Life goes on, it becomes increas­ing­ly clear that if it weren’t for the Unit­ed King­dom, and Win­ton in par­tic­u­lar, no one would have stepped in to save the Jew­ish chil­dren as the Nazis occu­pied Prague. Accord­ing to the film’s ver­sion of his­to­ry, Britain is the only safe place for them to be in a world that is oth­er­wise con­trolled by Hitler’s Ger­many. Through these film depic­tions, the Unit­ed King­dom at large has become syn­ony­mous with democ­ra­cy and free­dom, and the suc­cess of these films sug­gests a sense of nos­tal­gia in British – and per­haps even inter­na­tion­al – audi­ences for the alleged role that the Unit­ed King­dom played in defend­ing democ­ra­cy, free­dom, and jus­tice for all.

This affec­tion­ate view of the Unit­ed King­dom, a nation that has cur­rent­ly been los­ing some sig­nif­i­cant areas of influ­ence in the geopo­lit­i­cal sce­nario of mod­ern-day pol­i­tics and has alien­at­ed Euro­pean neigh­bours since Brex­it, sends a clear mes­sage. The remem­brance of a glo­ri­ous past (regard­less of whether that tru­ly exist­ed) sug­gests a sense of patri­o­tism for what the coun­try once was and – at least accord­ing to cur­rent polit­i­cal claims and nation­al­ist nar­ra­tives – can once again become. This is not just true for One Life, as many oth­er British war films offer the same per­spec­tive on his­to­ry and the war. In Dark­est Hour, Churchill’s final tri­umph and famous speech glo­ri­ous­ly end the movie, cre­at­ing an image of Britain as a lead­ing world pow­er. This same idea has a pow­er­ful res­o­nance in today’s polit­i­cal life as this image of Britain has been evoked in more recent years too and has become key to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party’s elec­toral cam­paigns. In this sense, British war films can also encap­su­late con­ser­v­a­tive sen­ti­ments in the way they utilise nos­tal­gia and emo­tions to evoke a sense of patri­o­tism in mod­ern-day Britain.

One Life is also a tale of a sin­gu­lar act of hero­ism. ​“You have a lot of faith in ordi­nary peo­ple,” says one of the char­ac­ters in the film to Nicholas when he is try­ing to recruit peo­ple to help him save the chil­dren. This is also what the movie is ulti­mate­ly encour­ag­ing us to do. The film inspires a sense of pride in the actions of an every­day indi­vid­ual who dis­tin­guished him­self for his courage and resilience. If Nicholas was just a nor­mal per­son, then the same hero­ism could poten­tial­ly be found today in any British per­son sit­ting in the audi­ence and watch­ing this movie.

Inter­est­ing­ly, por­tray­ing the indi­vid­ual hero as an ordi­nary per­son has always been a key ele­ment of British war cin­e­ma, even at the time of the Sec­ond World War with the pro­pa­gan­da films that the indus­try used to focus on, such as an Airman’s Let­ter Home direct­ed by Michael Pow­ell. In con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma, Dunkirk puts a lot of empha­sis on how the effort and brav­ery of ordi­nary British cit­i­zens made the impres­sive evac­u­a­tion of Dunkirk pos­si­ble. The Dark­est Hour does some­thing very sim­i­lar; while the major­i­ty of the film is focused on Churchill, there is one piv­otal scene when the British Prime Min­is­ter dis­cuss­es the peace nego­ti­a­tions with every­day peo­ple on the tube in London.

While Hitler and Nazi Ger­many may be men­tioned more than once through­out the film, the sto­ry of One Life could eas­i­ly be extrap­o­lat­ed from its his­tor­i­cal con­text. The chil­dren that Win­don saves are nev­er addressed as Jews but only as refugees; sim­i­lar­ly, the ene­my the main char­ac­ter is fight­ing against remains face­less and large­ly name­less too. In fact, the film nev­er shows any­thing about the war itself, with both the con­flict and the peo­ple Britain is fight­ing against are nev­er por­trayed on screen. It would be easy to give anoth­er name or nation­al­i­ty to this antag­o­nist and still have the audi­ence feel the same sen­ti­ments of fight­ing for democ­ra­cy and jus­tice. This stands in stark con­trast with the cur­rent state of the coun­try in both inter­nal and for­eign pol­i­tics, rang­ing from the Con­ser­va­tion plan to bring back manda­to­ry Nation­al Ser­vice to the UK government’s ambiva­lent response to the human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Gaza which has left over 37,000 Pales­tini­ans dead with many thou­sands more injured and displaced.

Over­all, One Life seems to mir­ror an ongo­ing trend in British war films that sees the genre focus­ing on a very spe­cif­ic retelling of the past, one that focus­es main­ly on the promi­nent role that the coun­try played in the Sec­ond World War and on the actions of ordi­nary peo­ple. By doing so, these films cre­ate a sense of nos­tal­gia in the audi­ence for a time when peo­ple were will­ing to make per­son­al sac­ri­fices to save their coun­try and when the Unit­ed King­dom was syn­ony­mous with free­dom and democ­ra­cy, or at least accord­ing to these films. As such, they man­age to sug­gest a selec­tive mem­o­ry of the his­tor­i­cal events they depict. At the same time, they also glo­ri­fy the acts of sin­gu­lar hero­ism, per­haps in the hope of sug­gest­ing that times like those may come again. All of this plays a role in the view­ers’ under­stand­ing of the role of Britain in the present geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion. They ulti­mate­ly seem to shape the mod­ern audience’s under­stand­ing of both past and present by invok­ing feel­ings of patri­o­tism towards the UK today by reflect­ing on its seem­ing­ly hero­ic past.