One Life review: Anthony Hopkins is exceptional in touching biopic of the ‘British Schindler’

Many may be familiar with the story of Sir Nicholas Winton, thanks to social media posts hailing his efforts in rescuing children during the World War II Nazi occupation. Regarded as the ‘British Schindler’ who undertook the mighty task of transporting as many as 669 children from war-occupied Czechoslovakia to safety in his home country of Britain, Sir Winton’s is a remarkable story that still remains obscure.

However, in 1988, the then-popular British reality show That’s Life! invited the retired stockbroker under some pretence to reunite him with all the children (or their descendants) he saved from perishing in concentration camps 50 years ago. The moment is absolute TV gold, no doubt, but more importantly, it marked a rare occurrence of popular television programming delivering a grand and sincere gesture of respect and adulation to someone. The snippet from the show, which is recreated in James Hawes’s One Life with great empathy, is a widely loved clip on social media.

Tender portrait of a Good Samaritan

In the film rendition, Sir Anthony Hopkins plays the septuagenarian version of the character, with Johnny Flynn essaying the much younger Sir Winton. If Hopkins is feather-light and touchingly natural with his portrayal, Flynn takes the liberty of pitching his metre a notch higher. Regardless, the combined result is one to savour, because the duo manages to imbue their subject with such care and legitimacy that you are left in awe.

Helena Bonham Carter as Sir Nicholas Winton’s mother Babette Winton, an immigrant herself, is delightful as she shares the burden that her son and a few other volunteers have taken up collectively as the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. In the eye of the storm are countless refugees, many of them Jews, whose lives are at the mercy of Adolf Hitler’s malevolence. And Sir Nicholas Winton, along with fellow humanitarians Doreen Warriner, Hana Hejdukova, and others, starts his own kindertransport at the onset of World War II to move all the children of the refugees to foster homes in Britain. The details of Nicky’s Children, including photographs, dwell timelessly in Sir Winton’s scrapbook, which now resides as a great relic in Israel’s Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center.

Hawes’s film, based on the script by Nick Drake (not the singer-songwriter) and Lucinda Coxon, is perhaps best described as a memory piece that toggles between the Prague story and the one that is rekindled unwittingly by a much older Sir Winton. One Life takes you into its fold not just as an intense, inspiring story but also as a tender look at a man who, even decades later, is yet to shake off the melancholia. Among the nine trains containing refugee children, only eight successfully manage to wade through the Nazi searchlights. The ninth one carried the biggest group of 250 children but the carriage never made it home. It was on that day, we are told, that Hitler occupied Poland and kicked off the war.

A departure from extolling biographies

As One Life switches between the past and the present, we slowly acknowledge that Nicholas Winton never forgave himself for what those 250-odd children endured. He has suppressed the idea that many of them, or almost all of them, suffered one of the greatest tragedies of all time and has instead seen life through a careful mixture of optimism and denial. “I've learnt to keep my imagination in check so that I can still be of use. And not go raving mad,” he notes at one point in the film. The impact of this line is accentuated further by Sir Anthony Hopkins whose cadence effortlessly carries all the weight and all the pain of the man. It is said that Winton’s daughter requested that Hopkins bring her father’s amazing story to life and the actor gladly obliged.

Thanks to the contrasting halves of the film, intertwined effectively by editor Lucia Zucchetti, One Life never feels like a puff piece or a disingenuous attempt at embezzling a real-life tale. Although the portions set in Prague are a tad too schmaltzy at times, the nimbleness and silence of the other half complement the drama and the vigour. Director James Hawes employs Volker Bertelmann’s score as an operatic tool that heightens and even exaggerates the emotion, but he also ensures that the endeavour never feels contrived.

Sure, the film is a tribute of the obvious kind and it refrains from digging too deep, but it never overstates its admiration. Just as Zac Nicholson’s morning-sun-lit frames suggest, One Life is about the days that lead up to Nicholas Winton finally embracing truth as it is and walking up to that much-deserved place in the sun. More than anything else, the film is an endearing departure from the loud and extolling biographies that we have grown used to watching of late.

(One Life is currently playing in theatres)