One Life Review: A deeply moving portrait of humanity in the face of evil
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Daniel Lammin
As inevitable as a film about Sir Nicholas Winton seemed, the stars have aligned for it to arrive at this moment. They aligned with the dedicated creative team and supporting cast, all of whom understood the necessity of this story and the responsibility of dramatising it. And they aligned with the moment in history in which the film itself arrives.
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By focusing in on Nicholas in his later years and his quiet internal struggle, the film averts many of the more obvious biopic tropes. The flashbacks to the late 30s provide the necessary narrative drama, but Hawkes, Coxon and Drake really do keep it as the secondary narrative. For the most part, we sit inside Sir Nicholas' internal space, quiet moments of contemplation and struggle. This gives us a clear and easily accessible emotional anchor point as an audience, rather than overwhelming us with the enormity of the evacuation. Coxon and Drake's dialogue might be a tad clunky at times, especially in the flashbacks where they have to communicate a lot of bureaucratic exposition and make drama out of paperwork, but they keep these moments swift, letting the emotional drama lead the way. It's a real credit to their writing and to Hawkes' direction that, as strong as the flashbacks are, you find yourself eager to return to the older Nicholas, both for the stillness of those sequences and their emotional complexity.

An obvious comparison for 'One Life' would be Spielberg's monumental 1993 masterpiece 'Schindler's List', and the two films share more than just the obvious narrative similarities. Spielberg's film ends with Schindler sobbing, wishing he could have saved even one more person. This guilt permeates through the entirety of 'One Life' - the tragedy being that, regardless of what he achieved, Sir Nicholas believes he could and should have done more. No one in the film is telling him this, and certainly from the flashbacks we can see just how impossible the task was and how remarkable it was that they saved as many as they did, but his guilt is so quiet, so deep, so all-consuming, almost impossible to counteract. In one of the film's most moving scenes, where Sir Nicholas shares the scrapbook with Holocaust researcher Elisabeth Maxwell (Marthe Keller, 'Marathon Man'), he interprets her amazement at the number of children he rescued as confirmation that they didn't save enough. With no notion of what happened to the children after their rescue he is left, not with the faces of those who survived, but those he couldn't, the full and rich lives of families he met in the detritus of Prague wiped from the earth by the most inconceivable evil, and it is only when he believes that sharing his story may help others in need that he reluctantly steps into the spotlight.

It's the fact that 'One Life' keeps this sadness and this melancholy ever-present that makes the film as affecting and as vital as it is. Heroism comes at a cost, especially when that heroism involves looking the worst of humanity in the face. As the film moves through the flashbacks to the inevitable invasion of Czechoslovakia, it never pretends that we don't know what's on the other side of it. The sadness at the heart of 'One Life' may not be as overwhelming as a film like 'Schindler's List', but it is quiet and potent, preventing the film from lapsing into lazy inspirational clichés. It is able to make a number of astute assumptions about its audience - it trusts that they remember what happened, trusts that they understand the weight of it, and also trusts that they know how this ends, with Sir Nicholas sitting in a studio in the BBC, where the ghosts that haunt him are replaced with the faces of the lives he saved and the generations that exist now because of him. In order to get there, to that beautiful ending we know is coming, Hawkes and his team need to earn it, not just rely on it to work no matter what. When it does come, the fact we have journeyed through the difficulties of the Kindertransport and sat in the deep, potent guilt of a man who has no reason to feel guilty, makes the moment itself all the more powerful.

At the heart of the film, and without whom, even with all the care taken with it, the whole thing wouldn't work, is Sir Anthony Hopkins. His performance is extraordinary, careful and quiet and absolutely devastating.

There's a real sense of responsibility to the craft of the film. It's unadorned and unhurried, devoid of flash or pop. It has a job to do, and it's going to do it with patience, clarity and respect. This extends through the direction, the writing, the editing and design and into the performances, all of which take this responsibility as an opportunity to acknowledge history rather than as a burden. Tremendous actors such as Helena Bonham Carter, Ronald Garai and Alex Sharp support Johnny Flynn through the flashbacks, bringing a necessary lightness of touch to balance the weight of what Flynn has to deliver. The same can be said of Lena Olin and Samantha Spiro as Esther Rantzer in the 80s sequences. Everyone in the supporting cast knows what part they need to play, and they bring all their collective and considerable skill to bear on it. Likewise with the ever-excellent Flynn, who has emerged as one of the UK's great acting chameleons and one of their most exciting talents.

At the heart of the film, and without whom, even with all the care taken with it, the whole thing wouldn't work, is Sir Anthony Hopkins. His performance is extraordinary, careful and quiet and absolutely devastating. He finds access to Sir Nicholas' guilt and sadness with such humanity, such honesty, such generosity. There are moments in this film where we just see him sitting in silence, and you can feel everyone in the room holding their breath, holding back tears. When that quiet sadness breaks, it's impossible not to feel your heart ache for him. It feels like we'd forgotten Hopkins for a few years, forgot that he was one of our greatest living actors, someone whose work used to make the world stop in awe. His turn on 'Westworld' was tremendous, and his jaw-dropping (and deservedly Oscar-winning) performance in 'The Father' felt like a miracle, the return of a great artist. His performance in 'One Life' seals the deal. If this had been released in the United States during this year's awards season, I have no doubt we would be talking about him as a serious awards contender. It's easily one of the finest performances of the year.

As inevitable as a film about Sir Nicholas Winton seemed, the stars have aligned for it to arrive at this moment. They aligned with the dedicated creative team and supporting cast, all of whom understood the necessity of this story and the responsibility of dramatising it. They aligned with the central performance of Sir Anthony Hopkins, who imbues the film with so much grace and melancholy. And they aligned with the moment in history in which the film itself arrives. It was impossible to watch this film and not consider the actions of Sir Nicholas in the 30s in the face of overwhelming genocide, in relation to the acts of genocide happening before our eyes right now to the people of Gaza, the horrifying inevitability that comes when extreme and unchecked violence is unleashed against a people while international powers just sit by and wring their hands. Watching this nightmare play out before our eyes has been impossible to wholly comprehend, but a film like 'One Life' reminds us that, when governments fail to act, we as individuals still have the capacity to stand up against such evil, that what seems like so little that we can do can still make a difference. So many suffered at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust, and so many suffer in Gaza right now, but just saving one life, in whatever way we can, is to stand in the face of unrestrained evil and believe in the potential good in all of us. As is written in the Talmud, "Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world."