“One Life” is about the life of Nicky Winton (Anthony Hopkins, “Silence of the Lambs”). Uh, no.
“One Life” is about the war efforts of Nicky W —
Argh.
I’ll say what I feel. “One Life” is about two minutes in Nicky Winton’s life. If you’ve come across this viral, tear-jerking clip and took a cursory glance at its history, then you know all you need to know about Nicky Winton and his heroic efforts. Why? Because every moment of “One Life” is designed to get to that viral clip at the expense of any depth. The film isn’t shy about it either, as director James Hawes (“Black Mirror”) has little to offer aside from a reenactment.
But I’m getting way ahead of myself.
Based on a true story, “One Life” opens on Nicholas Winton in his later years as an old, hoarding Londoner sifting through a pile of coins as the radio miffs him with news. Winton kills some time stacking one pence on top of another and he unexpectedly finds a black button among the piles of metal. Instead of throwing it away, he shoves the button in his pocket, remarking to his wife that “you never know when it may come in handy.” A hoarder through and through, this Winton. The button, aside from surface-level characterization, serves as a rather blunt metaphor for the value that he puts on a tiny object: Nothing can be easily discarded for weathered Winton. Hawes asks us to keep this innocuous moment in mind as the film attempts to explore his past.
As a young man in 1938, Winton (Johnny Flynn, “Emma.”) had nobly traveled to Prague to help Jewish refugees who had fled from the Nazis. Although he only intended to stay for a week, witnessing the poor living conditions of the children spurred him to stay and help them escape. With the help of his mother and members of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, Winton devises a plan to bring all these Jewish children to England by train before the Nazis inevitably close the border. Eventually, he succeeded in saving 669 children, but over 200 children failed to leave Prague.
Half of the film chronicles Winton’s efforts to expedite the Prague refugee plan: the hurdles, successes and failures. The other half follows Winton in his later years as he struggles to come to terms with the lost children. If he cared enough about one button, Hawes poses, imagine the guilt he must feel for the lives that, in Winton’s mind, he had failed to save. “One Life” is an intercut dual narrative. The past provides context and the present documents how a hero comes to understand the scope of his good deeds. That would be a touching tale — one that would succeed in exploring survivor’s guilt — if it weren’t for the vacuous brevity with which Hawes and screenwriters Lucinda Coxon (“The Danish Girl”) and Nick Drake (“Romulus, My Father”) handle every scene.
Act One, which contains Winton’s plan, embodies all of the problems with the film’s script and direction. In order to save the children, Winton must first determine the number of children, along with their names and pictures. Only after that can Winton apply for their visas to come to London, set up donations and help the children find foster homes. The crucial step is getting a list of the children. The trouble? Winton is a foreigner in Czechoslovakia. For all the Jewish families and rabbis know, Winton is spying for the Third Reich and is leading their children to death camps. It’s a logistical nightmare. Winton has to convince the locals that he has good intentions; if he doesn’t, then the fate of more than 1,000 children is sealed. It’s a race against the clock; nerves should be wrecked and breaths should be held.
But I would be damned if Hawes portrayed this monumental task as anything more than a mild inconvenience. The pivotal sequence — in which the filmmakers could possibly show Winton’s determination, heart, and perseverance under uncertainty and duress — is an anti-climatic 45-second montage where Winton speed-dials locals, facepalms from exhaustion and fails to acquire any information. Then, he “finally” gets a meeting with a rabbi. The rabbi, after initially voicing his suspicions, eventually hands Winton the list within two minutes of the meeting just because Winton says that he cares about the Jewish children and reveals his grandmother’s side is Jewish. No specific details of the plan are discussed, no security measures are put in place, no realistic struggle or tension exist, no nothing. The scene only serves to depict Winton as an upstanding citizen — which we fully understand and admire — rather than exploring the difficult task of establishing trust in a foreign community.
A single scene without logic or drama isn’t a deal-breaker; rather, the reason why the scene lacks these qualities reveals the film’s larger problems. Hawes consistently chooses to “tell” more than he ever decides to “show,” which forwards the plot but feels as though Hawes and his screenwriters are disinterested in both the historical events of the film and developing characters through them. In “One Life,” overcoming obstacles amounts to championing freedom and children rather than problem-solving. Exploring the latter would have constituted a narrative; instead, Hawes hones in on the former, making the film a didactic speech. Legendary actress Helena Bonham Carter (“Fight Club”), playing Winton’s mother, is reduced to an inspirational mouthpiece despite inhabiting a character whose contributions to the refugee effort were likely far more complicated and interesting. Much can be said about all the other actors; Hopkins and Flynn shine only when they have no dialogue to recite. As a result of the tell-don’t-show approach, the scenes lack weight. Once again, everything in “One Life” is designed to get to the viral clip.
And the scene blows. The real-life broadcast shows all the refugees standing in unison. Winton quickly shoots up from his chair, overwhelmed by the amount of people who owe their lives to him. In that instant, the numbers have faces and the distant memories of the Jewish children come back to life and age in real time. I sob whenever I watch the original broadcast. In the film, the sincerity is stripped away by Hawes stretching the scene out, adding unnatural bits of dialogue and imposing upon it a grand score. The refugees stand up row by row — Hawes laboriously cuts at each row to emphasize the large number of refugees. And Winton, instead of turning around like a regular person would at the commotion behind him, stubbornly stays seated until prompted otherwise. When Winton dramatically turns around, the audience should be teary-eyed and glad that a hero finally gets his dues and overcomes his guilt.
But the scene construction is so forced and intentioned that the supposed emotional gut punch barely grazes the stomach. It’s tragically apt that the film essentially ends on this saccharine note. By milking a simple moment for “cinematic” effect, Hawes spends nearly two hours setting one scene up, only to return home with an empty pail. “One Life” was headed in the wrong direction the entire time. No matter the heroism, you can’t make a film about a man’s life based on just one moment.
Daily Arts Writer Ben Luu can be reached at benllv@umich.edu.