“One Life” (2023) follows the life of Sir. Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton, a London stockbroker who is notable for rescuing 669 children during World War II from Czechoslovakia as Nazis invaded. This film is an adaptation of daughter Barbara Winton’s biography, “If It’s Not Impossible…The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton,” and she requested that Anthony Hopkins play her father, which he agreed after reading the script. Hopkins plays Nicky at seventy-nine years old, and Johnny Flynn plays him during World War II. The film only covers the highlights of his life: the events immediately surrounding his fateful visit to Prague when he decided to rescue children, and the events leading up to the moment when he became widely recognized for saving children.
Hopkins makes everything better. He plays Nicky as a taciturn man still driven to do good albeit on a smaller, less effective scale, who is stuck in the past though he does not talk about it. Hopkins depicts Nicky by mainly reacting to the world around him. There is not a lot said. He can go to a window, any window, stare outside and convey a deeper well spring of emotion that other actors cannot touch with all their wailing and ugly crying. During the fall or winter of 1987, when Nicky hears about another refugee crisis, Hopkins’ silent reaction does not scream disappointment, but it also does not signal resignation. He is a man who knows that he does not have enough life in him to push the boulder of indifference up the hill, but still feels condemned for not trying. Instead, he settles on trying to make his wife, Grete Winton (Lena Olin), happy and prepare to be a grandpa—concepts that he knows are important so he puts in the effort, but also feel like a betrayal when he could be using that effort to save lives.
Lena Olin as Nicky’s wife, Grete Wilson, is not given much to do here, and I have never understood the point of hiring someone who is stunning then making them dowdy for the role other than to get more people to see “One Life.” There are plenty of average aging actors who need work and would be thrilled with such a limiting role. Maybe Olin is excited, but I’m not. If Olin is on screen, I want her to do more than play the supportive wife and mother who silently commiserates with her husband while relegated to the sidelines. It would have been a more interesting choice to frame the role in a postmodern way. Now we are more comfortable critiquing humanitarians who deem everyone else important but neglect their families, which I am not suggesting that Winton did, but it would have been more nuanced to depict how Grete supported him yet surreptitiously show how she and his family felt neglected and maybe guilty for demanding that Winton live up to his chosen responsibilities as a family man. There were different prevailing gender normative attitudes during their era, but feelings never change, and they still may have felt frustrated and hurt. It is a telling detail that in the film, Barbara, her husband, and child have fewer lines and are confined to the background compared to “Nicky’s children.”
Flynn is serviceable as the younger Nicky, but it is not always possible to see the through line between Flynn and Hopkins’ performance except at stressful times when Nicky is stifling his visceral emotional action and prioritizes being functional over being human. Both actors pause and show the moment when Nicky flips the switch to move forward instead of feeling that pain. It is impossible and unfair to ask any actor to be as good as Hopkins, so Flynn deserves kudos for not messing it up and doing his job well enough that the audience does not get taken out of the film.
Helena Bonham Carter plays Nicky’s mother, Babi Winton, during the World War II United Kingdom sequences, and she steals every scene that she is in. As Nicky’s anchor and source of his goodness, she is the highlight of the flashbacks. Long before the beginning of World War I, in 1907, Babi, a German Jewish woman, immigrated to the United Kingdom, and Bonham Carter shows Babi’s pride as a naturalized British citizen. She uses her idealistic outlook on her adopted nation to shame bureaucrats into decency and is the secret weapon in Nicky’s aresenal. “One Life” implies that she is the reason that he got as far as he did. Her absence is felt keenly in the 80s scenes—no “Howard’s End” (1992) reunion.
If “One Life” does anything well, it is stressing the importance of bureaucrats behaving like human beings, not as indifferent agentic state actors who do not feel personal responsibility when acting on behalf of a grander authority, a concept dissected brilliantly in “Experimenter” (2015) and addressed humorously in “Problemista” (2024). Nicky is a special person because he sees other human beings’ safety as his responsibility even though he has no affirmative, assigned duty whereas others, especially when they work for the government, may not feel that duty even if it is explicitly listed in the job description. At the beginning of Winton’s mission, when awarding visas, Mr. Leadbetter (Michael Gould) is more concerned with fairness-first come, first serve. Babi appeals to his personal status as a father to equate refugee children with his own. When Nicky gets there, Leadbetter is emotional and as devoted to the mission, but “One Life” suggests that Leadbetter is the only one bending the rules or the only one in that position. When he is not there, no one is getting a visa outside of their turn. Who is right? Is it fair that the person who came first, who may also be a child and identical in circumstance to Nicky’s children, but one whom the Wintons are not advocating for, must wait behind children who will be prioritized because they have advocates? It is easy to say yes, but is there a way to systemize state decisions in a fair and humanitarian way? At the moment, it feels like the answer is no, and a choice gets made, but everyone theoretically agrees that the result should not be children dying.
Critics of “One Life” hate how the film does not emphasize the Jewish identity of Nicky’s children and instead leans on their refugee status. As an outsider, I did not pick up on this because there is an amazing scene where Rabbi Hertz (Samuel Finzi) grills younger Nicky about the prospective foster parents. Hertz is concerned that the children’s lives will be saved, but their Jewish identity will be erased through assimilation, and Nicky explains his background and his identity, which kind of confirms Hertz’s fears that these children are going to lose their heritage. With the benefit of living with his biological, Jewish parents, Nicky is baptized as an Anglican yet is an agnostic and a humanitarian first. Hertz is relieved because Hertz’s definition of being Jewish is not practicing the religion but having the bloodline. In many ways, the film is faithful to the real-life Nicky, who by all accounts, did not care about anything other than saving lives, and it is his story, not Nicky’s children. While the criticism should not stick, it is fair. The film never pretends to be a comprehensive handling of even Nicky’s life story. I wanted a prose dump about what happened to Babi or how Nicky met Grete, but neither is germane and would have been prose dumps.
It is an accurate criticism that “One Life” only shows Nicky’s children as happy, grateful adults, not haunted at losing the people whom they loved and the life that they had. Their existence functions as Nicky’s reward and reassurance for his trauma. To show them as anything but joyous would necessitate a criticism of Nicky for not caring about anything but saving their lives. It puts a great deal of responsibility and maybe a chilling effect on future do-gooders who may choose not to intervene out of fear that they would later face criticism for the flaws in their benevolent actions. It is why there is a lack of understanding when adoptees critique the adoption system and adopted parents instead of just being unconditionally grateful. Prioritizing an adult’s feelings over the psychological well-being of a child is abuse. Many adult survivors of the Holocaust lived lives of sorrow and despair so to expect more from children is oppressive. It should be possible to praise someone for being better than most people while acknowledging their flaws because no one is perfect, and that criticism is how we ensure that we do better in the future. It is also a continuum on the spectrum of children should just be happy to be alive and not need anything beyond that. It is not examined with regards to Nicky’s family and his “children” but outside of extreme circumstances like genocide, on a quotidian level, life is the bare minimum, and there is too much room left over if adults are immune from criticism over other forms of neglect.
Analysis of “One Life” miss that the film was erasing identity by reducing its reference to refugees’ specific demographic details, to make an argument in favor of rescuing present refugees. While Jewish people still face Anti-Semitism, I am unaware of Jewish people currently being refugees in great numbers. This film galvanizes viewers to behave like Nicky now. The film lays it on thick that refugees were once wealthy, respectable people but in the context of a war zone, lose that privileged status. There is one refugee, Vera Diamontova (Frantiska Polakova), who enjoys skiing and swimming, which Nicky relates to. The filmmakers are playing respectability politics, so we do not fear refugees now and reminding viewers that refugees are just like you and me. The problem with this type of thinking is the inverse implication-if the person has every identity that we despise, does that person deserve to face dehumanization and slaughter at the hands of the Nazis? The right answer is no, and by devaluing any human being as unworthy of saving, we get closer to relating to Nazi sentiment.
“One Life” would be a forgettable television movie if it was not for the cast’s performances and the innately powerful story. If you are not moved when watching parents being separated from their children or children being afraid because a Nazi is on the train and would love to kill them, get a therapist, and tell them your symptoms. The film leans hard on conveying the chaos of the times as an excuse to convey a sense of urgency rather than character development. Every one of the refugees and the do-gooders are unique because the actors make them unique, but there is not enough on the page. It is very economical, and if you remember the do-gooders’ names—Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai), Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp) and Hana Hejdukova (Juliana Moska)—it was a combination of you paying close attention, and the actors making their characters memorable. Martin Blake (Ziggy Heath) is a reporter who helps Winton garner sympathy from the British public so more British people will volunteer to become foster parents or donate money. It is a blink and miss it scene, but because elder Nicky is at his most loquacious with older Martin, whom Jonathan Pryce plays, Martin becomes retroactively important. It is a mini “The Two Popes” (2019) reunion. Characters just appear, and it is hard to figure out the broader context of their relative importance in the overall story or even know their identity even in the 80s scenes where there is no compelling reason to be so slipshod with the ensemble. We are just supposed to go with the flow, and everything will get sorted. The filmmakers expect that all viewers know who Betty Maxwell is. I hate prose dumps so I’m not asking for lengthy, action-halting dossiers on everyone, but a little more groundwork would have been nice.
By showing the elder Nicky watching “That’s Life” while eating then turning it off because he deems the show too frivolous, director James Hawes and writers Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake did a good job of providing context for the BBC magazine program, which is pivotal to the plot. It is obvious to deduce that the TV show is popular from the hosts’ demeanor and the large studio audience. It is a great way of educating viewers who are unfamiliar with the program. For people who watched the show, it has to be accurate, so it rings a nostalgic bell and does not elicit cries of falling short of reality. “One Life” is Hawes first feature film, but he has a long career in television, which explains why the film feels thin. He needs to work on transitioning from the small to the big screen. Lucinda Coxon has film experience and her most notable work is “The Danish Girl” (2015) so further explanation is unnecessary. Nick Drake has the least cinematic experience of the three, but he is probably best known for “Romulus, My Father” (2007), which was adapted from an autobiography and left me running to read the source material because the movie could be inscrutable and similarly faltered in providing context.
“One Life” is an old-fashioned movie that does the job that it came to do: praise Nicky, (hopefully) persuade people to care about refugees and do good. In comparison to contemporary movies that go a little deeper in terms of examining the complexities of the period and characters, this film falls short and fail at making the visual storytelling as powerful as the real-life story.