One Life review – pro­tect Antho­ny Hop­kins at all costs

British read­ers of a cer­tain age will no doubt fond­ly recall the top­i­cal light enter­tain­ment pro­gramme That’s Life!, which was a per­ma­nent fix­ture of the BBC1 sched­ule from the ear­ly 1970s to the mid ​’90s. If you’re not old enough to remem­ber, you may yet be famil­iar with a clip from one of the show’s most famous episodes, which occa­sion­al­ly does the rounds on social media – in it, a smart­ly dressed elder­ly gen­tle­man receives the shock of a life­time cour­tesy of host Esther Rantzen and the live stu­dio audi­ence, with whom he shares a spe­cial, hith­er­to undis­closed con­nec­tion. This film is the sto­ry of that man and the extra­or­di­nary human­i­tar­i­an deed that earned him a knight­hood and led the press to dub him the ​“British Schindler”.

One Life opens in leafy Berk­shire in the late ​’80s, where Nicholas Win­ton (Antho­ny Hop­kins), a first-gen­er­a­tion émi­gré of Ger­man-Jew­ish descent, is liv­ing a peace­ful life with his part­ner Grete (Lina Olin). One day, after some gen­tle per­sua­sion from Grete, Nicholas decides to clear out his office; among the mis­cel­la­neous junk he’s accu­mu­lat­ed over the years is a large leather-bound dossier detail­ing his self­less exploits in the lead up to World War Two.

In flash­back, we meet a much younger Win­ton (played by John­ny Fly­nn) as he embarks on a dar­ing mis­sion to extri­cate hun­dreds of most­ly Jew­ish chil­dren from a refugee camp in Nazi-occu­pied Czecho­slo­va­kia. This turned out to be one of the most suc­cess­ful res­cue efforts of what became known as the Kinder­trans­port. Yet due to the covert nature of the oper­a­tion, as well as Winton’s humil­i­ty, his cru­cial role in it went unrecog­nised for half a century.

As is often the case with films that con­stant­ly alter­nate between sep­a­rate time­lines, you may find that your atten­tion is held more strong­ly by one than the oth­er. But direc­tor James Hawes does an admirable job of giv­ing both nar­ra­tive threads, and the per­for­mances con­tained with­in, plen­ty of room to breathe with­out los­ing sight of the big­ger picture.

Fly­nn arguably has the eas­i­er task of rais­ing the emo­tion­al stakes while the young Win­ton races against the clock to help as many chil­dren as pos­si­ble to escape the Holo­caust before it’s too late. But it’s Hop­kins who deliv­ers the stand-out moment in the film, express­ing 50 years of pent-up frus­tra­tion and regret over the kids Win­ton wasn’t able to save in a sud­den cathar­tic release.

This is also a film that ben­e­fits from occa­sion­al glim­mers of light­ness, which con­tribute to a more round­ed sense of who Win­ton was as a per­son while pro­vid­ing some respite from the weighty sub­ject mat­ter. Hop­kins’ easy chem­istry with Jonathan Pryce, for exam­ple, ele­vates a sim­ple expos­i­to­ry scene into a mem­o­rably amus­ing exchange. And there’s a very fun­ny bit where Win­ton takes his sto­ry to a region­al news­pa­per only to have it reject­ed on the grounds that it doesn’t have a strong enough local angle. Even­tu­al­ly, the pro­duc­ers of That’s Life! caught wind of it, and the rest is his­to­ry. Spare a thought for the edi­tor of the Maid­en­head Adver­tis­er, who must have been dread­ing this day.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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