One Life
A man is on a mission — to declutter the house whilst his wife is away, in preparation for a future daughter-new grandchild visit. Only he has a very important briefcase which needs a new home, not just a new dust-gathering location. Buoyed up by lunches from his old friend Martin (Jonathan Pryce), Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) begins to investigate options for where it should be placed.
Rather than a spy story, this is a heart-touching true story of Nicholas Winton, a ski-ing, swimming young London stock broker, who goes to Prague, sees the refugee crisis there, the impact of the persecution of the Jews and political/regime opponents — and decides he needs to make a difference. Inspired by the example of the British child evacuation, programme, Winton decides to move as many children (who turn out to be Jewish children) to safety as he can, in a harshly bureaucratic, anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish time. In case it all sounds horribly familiar, it’s the late 1930s and the Nazis are aggressively on the move, being appeased by European countries as they keep coming forward.
Portraying the older Winton, Anthony Hopkins bustles about making room, and not wanting to be recognised as a hero. Jumping backwards and forwards in time, the younger Winton is jauntily portrayed by Jonny Flynn, seamlessly creating a younger Hopkins too. Helena Bonham Carter is Winton’s mother, marshalled in to charmingly batter administration systems into helping and doing what they should.
Lena Olin, Romola Garai and Alex Sharp are charity workers in Prague, trying to manage an impossible situation of fleeing people from Germany and Austria. Winton notices the many children in the camp and how vulnerable they are. Though it feels impossible, he decides to make the possible — to get them to temporary safety, just as children are being evacuated from the perils of bombing to the countryside in the UK. However the system is a hard one and wants an impossible amount of paperwork and funding before trains of children, not their families, can come in.
Never the less, Team Winton are formidable and start fund raising, creating an admin system, finding sponsors and foster homes — and booking trains. Documentation needs to be assembled, including valid (stamped) visas and medical certificates and money found — £50 a time. Family-hearted officials have to be persuaded to do the right thing. All against the clock as the Nazis continue to pursue more land — and power.
It’s also messy — as a local rabbi rightly asks — ‘how safe is it?’ and ‘how will the children’s culture and faith be respected?’ It’s messy as the potential foster parents have their own limitations of who they can and can’t take, and what they want. ‘A boy with brown eyes aged 10’, for example… How will the Wintons navigate the preferential ‘shopping lists’ and government requirements? (And those in society who don’t want them at all).
The separation of siblings and families is heart-breaking, and Winton tortures himself, in not doing enough, haunted by the photos of the ones he couldn’t help in time. Yet he stood against an evil regime and did good, where he could.
Remarkably, Robert Maxwell, Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Maxwell and Esther Rantzen also turn up in this 1980s based film. Through ‘That’s Life’, although he doesn’t seek fame or public praise, Winton is reunited with the now adult children he helped to rescue. Like the recent Holocaust survivors portrait exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, we see that the person who saves one life saves generations, as children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren tumble into the Winton garden on a cheerful and lively visit. L’Chaim!
Uniquely this is about a self-effacing man who did the right thing just because it was the right thing to do. He saw it and couldn’t look away. He didn’t want anyone to know about him, just to help in doing the right thing too. A lesson for us all.
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