ONE LIFE : Tuesday 2nd January 2024.

I saw the PG Rated 'ONE LIFE' earlier this week, and this British biographical drama film is Directed by James Hawes in his feature film debut, although he has been Directing both single and multiple episodes of TV series for a number of years taking in the likes of 'Doctor Who', 'Merlin', 'Penny Dreadful', 'Black Mirror', 'The Alienist', 'Snowpiercer' and 'Slow Horses' most recently. This film is based on the book 'If It’s Not Impossible…The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton' by Barbara Winton, and it had its World Premiere screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9th September last year, was released in the UK on 1st January, and has garnered generally favourable critical reviews.

The film opens up in the suburbs of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England in 1987 with an ageing Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) pulling up to his house in h car and walking into his home with two handfuls of charity collection boxes, which he empties on the kitchen bench and begins sorting and counting the coin donations. He is interrupted by his wife Grete (Lena Olin) who chastises him for the amount of storage boxes, files and paraphernalia he has stacked up in the lounge room and his home office. She once again reminds him that after fifty years it is time he has a clean out and a de-clutter, especially considering that his pregnant daughter is expected home for Christmas and that they'll need the room. In his office, she pulls on a drawer of his desk to reveal a leather briefcase with the initials T.C. in faded gold lettering, saying that it is about time too that he did something about that, to which he promptly closes the drawer.

We then flashback to 1938 and a young Nicholas Winton (Johnny Flynn) is working as a stockbroker in London, but is wracked by a sense of duty to lend whatever support and aid he can to the groups of largely Jewish children in the recently Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia, just before the beginning of WWII. He visits Prague for a week, having been allowed time off work to do so, to see first hand the extent of the task he has vowed to undertake. There he meets Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp), Martin Blake (Ziggy Heath) and Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai) of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. Shocked by the what he witnessed in Prague in the makeshift camps housing countless displaced men, women and children, he telegrams his office to say he needs more time. 

Winton then calls his mother Babi Winton (Helena Bonham Carter) in London to enlist her assistance in lobbying the House of Commons to approve the entry of child refugees. Eventually, the House agrees upon the provision that younger than 17 years of age are permitted entry, provided they had a place to stay, a warranty of £50 was deposited per person for their eventual return to their own country, plus a handful of other conditions, and that all the necessary accompanying paperwork was in order. 

Back in 1987 and Grete is off on a short break to Europe, leaving Nicholas at home to begin the arduous task of clearing and de-cluttering their lounge room and study, which he does successfully, by burning many of the storage boxes in his back garden, much to Grete's very pleasant surprise when she arrives back home. On his desk rests the leather briefcase which it is revealed contains a scrapbook containing photographs and lists of the children, including their parents' names and the names and addresses of the families that took them in. Nicholas has lunch with Martin Blake (Jonathan Pryce) who says that the scrapbook is testimony to his determination in bringing back so many children and that he has a connection with Robert Maxwell who would be very interested in sighting it. And so Nicholas receives a call from Elisabeth Maxwell (Marthe Keller), a Holocaust researcher and wife of media magnate Robert Maxwell, and is stunned to learn that Winton was involved in the rescue and relocation of 669 children from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938/39. 

Back in early 1939 Winton is in London with Babi waiting track side for the arrival of trainloads of children over the course of several months with eight trains successfully making the journey across to London, and being successfully relocated with foster parents. However, the ninth train bringing 250 children across was scheduled to leave Prague on 1st September 1939, but was unable to depart, with Hitler's invasion of Poland on the same day the Second World War had begun. What became of those 250 children remains unknown but in all likelihood they perished in the Nazi concentration camps. 

Thanks to Robert Maxwell, the wider world found out about his work in February 1988 during an episode of the BBC television programme 'That's Life!' when he was invited as a member of the audience. At one point, Winton's scrapbook was shown and his achievements were explained. The host of the programme, Esther Rantzen (Samantha Spiro), introduced Winton to children he had helped to rescue live on air. 

In a follow-up programme of 'That's Life!' a week later at which Winton was again in the audience with his wife by his side this time, Rantzen asked whether anybody in the audience was among the children who owed their lives to Winton, and if so, to stand. At which, the entire audience rose to its feet surrounding Winton and applauded, with those closest embracing him. 

In a closing scene Nicholas and Grete are seen entertaining a family of a now adult rescued child and her family including several grandchildren at their home as they all make their way down to his swimming pool. In the closing credits actual footage of those now adult refugees is seen, together with Winton who in the 1983 Birthday Honours, was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), and in the 2003 New Year Honours, he was knighted for services to humanity, in recognition of his work on the Czech Kindertransport. He died in 2015 at the age of 106.

With 'One Life' here first time feature film Director James Hawes has delivered us a film that will resonate with WWII historians and those being introduced to the story of Nicholas Winton for the first time. This story of how a small group of people made such an impactful difference to the lives of 669 children, and how Winton only gained recognition for his efforts some fifty years after the fact is a story that needed to be told, and in weaving the timelines between 1938/39 and 1987/88 Director Hawes has eeked out a thought provoking and emotional biographical drama, paired with strong performances from Hopkins, Bonham Carter and Flynn that is unlikely to leave barely a dry eye in the house by the time the end credits roll.

'One Life' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-