One Life
“One Life” shows us the magnitude of one person’s actions in the face of profound evil. In telling the story of Nicholas Winton, we experience the actions of a man who saw only the desire to help when it would have been easy for others to do nothing. We all would like to think that we would do the same thing, but actions also require resources as much as the desire to help. How Nicky, as he was know, reacted to what he was seeing- and how he eventually had his story told- is inspiring, and by the end, we are flattened by emotions.
We first start Nicky’s story as he is an old man in 1987. He and his wife has to make decisions about some of his old possessions before a grandchild arrives. In searching, he finds the documents he kept of his work with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. He first went to Prague as a young man in 1938, and he encountered families whom were fleeing the Nazis in Germany and Austria. Rattled, he decides to try and help as many Jewish children as he can. By the time WWII started, he saved 669 Jewish children, and now, as an old man, his story will be told.
Winton is played by Anthony Hopkins as an old man, and Johnny Flynn as a young man, and both do superb work getting to Nicky’s inherent goodness. Seeing the evolution of this character through these two performances is a great example of dual casting. (This isn’t to say that we believe that Flynn would grow into Hopkins, but the progression of the character between the two actors is terrific.) I like that there are two different narratives going- one Nicky’s story of saving the children, and the other of the elder Nicky trying to get his story out there, not for his own vanity but to make sure the history of what the Nazis did is never forgotten. That leads us to the last 20-30 minutes of the film, when his past and present collide, and it’s impossible to hold back tears. The collective strength of James Hawes’s film is that final emotional impact, even if the film feels very familiar and predictable in its storytelling. “One Life” matters, both in the story being told, and in life.
