We are living in a time when the refugee and migrant problem has become a prime political issue. There are over a staggering 100 million people that have now been forced to flee their homes globally and have begun to overwhelm some of the countries where they seek refuge. Governments are, in the main, bereft of answers to the problem, except by building walls or trying to achieve more effective and punitive policing of their borders—both responses being clearly inadequate, and morally questionable.
Of course, there is nothing new about countries placing barriers against accepting refugees. One can think of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, who only in the most limited numbers were able to escape a future in the death camps and leave for safe havens in the U.K. and the U.S., as barriers against immigration were established.
Competently but unimaginatively and sentimentally directed by James Hawes, “One Life” resurrects an unknown action involving the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from Prague by a quiet English stockbroker, Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins), of German Jewish descent. Winton, with the assistance of other committed activists, helps—in scenes that can be emotionally moving—rescue the children from certain death as the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia.
The film is divided between the present, where an elderly Winton is going through a mountain of documents and haunting photos of the children from that time in Prague, and flashbacks into the past, when his young idealistic self (Johnny Flynn) is seen compiling a list of children needing rescue and then returning to Britain. There he worked to fulfill the legal requirements of bringing the children to Britain and finding homes and sponsors for them.
Neither the past nor present is treated with great psychological or political complexity in the film. The performances are uniformly first rate, but they demand little nuance. Helena Bonham Carter as the young Winton’s mother, however, emanates brisk authority running the London operation that helps save the children. And Hopkins successfully, even subtly, conveys how modest and self-deprecating Winton is about his own heroism—and his sense of having not done enough. (15,000 Jewish children were sent to the camps in Czechoslovakia, and only 200 survived.) The film, however, fails to delve deeply into British attitudes and policies towards the refugees (e.g., the role of antisemitism). One reason is that the there is no solid government support for saving the children.
The film’s big moment is when Winton becomes a guest on an utterly conventional BBC TV magazine show, “That’s Life!,” who as a guest is surprised that he is sitting in a studio audience surrounded by a number of the grown-up children he rescued from Czechoslovakia 50 years before. It is manipulative and a bit mawkish, but still stirring—just like the film.
