Jubilee Films for Pilgrims of Hope: 'One Life'

By Fr. Greg Apparcel, CSP

“One Life” took me by surprise.  Of course, I knew the ending – the massively watched YouTube video of Nicholas Winton in the audience of the BBC chat show “That’s Life.”  Unsuspectingly it is revealed that the audience is filled with the now-grown children that he had rescued from Prague in 1939.  However, there’s something special here that goes deeper and that’s due to the performances by Anthony Hopkins as the elderly Nicky Winton and by Johnny Flynn as his younger self more than forty years earlier.

Before the reenactment of the TV show, we see Winton as somewhat of a hoarder who has kept everything from his past.  Not only is his office a mess but also the dining room and every other room in his house to the frustration of his wife Grete (Lena Olin).  He opens his desk drawer and sees the old briefcase. We know it’s significant by the look on his face and with his wife’s words, “Nicky, you have to let it go.”  She is off to visit their daughter which gives him lots of alone time to remember the past and to go through his treasured photographs. As she gets on the bus Grete tells him “Don’t let yourself get – the way you get.”

It is London in 1938.  His mother Babi Winton (Helena Bonham Carter) is concerned about her son’s decision to go to Prague to help the Sudetenland refugees.  “I have to do something,” he says.  “These people need help.”  But what can he really do?  In Prague, he meets the people on the front lines of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia – Doreen, Trevor, and Hana – and he sees the refugees coughing, crying and shivering.  It’s the faces of the children that really get to him and he begins taking their photographs.  He is told, “England refuses to believe that these people are in danger.  Jewish people especially.”  He wonders if a mass transit of children is possible.  He wants to try.

Desiring a complete list of the most vulnerable children, he meets with a rabbi who is hesitant to trust him or believe he can accomplish this herculean project.  Winton says: “I’m moving children of all faiths and none, accommodating them in a safe home. . . They will be protected and returned to their families.”  The rabbi wants to know if he is Jewish.  His response is that his grandparents on both sides were Jewish, but he was baptized in the Church of England. The rabbi says then he considers him to be Jewish.  A London stockbroker by trade, Winton responds: “I’m a European agnostic socialist. I may be able to do something.” The rabbi warns, “Don’t start something that you may not be able to finish.”  It is Winton’s determination and refusal to let anything get in his way that illustrates the hope and possibilities of which the human spirit is capable.  What pushes this man to accomplish the impossible?

The elderly Nicky begins to go through his files and photos.  As he cleans and packs up his boxes, he remembers the most intense time of his life.  He recalls his supportive mother doing everything she could to help back home.  Babi discovers it is a huge task. She confronts the government officials who make difficult demands, asking for their help.  The children need separate visa applications, a sponsor family guaranteeing financial support, a medical examination, and a fee of fifty pounds.  The team needs to raise a great deal of money as well as to search for willing British foster parents.  Time is running out.  At one point Winton realizes the need for the help of the press: “Ordinary people wouldn’t stand for this if they knew.”  He goes back to England and tells of the need to rescue two thousand children who are in overcrowded, unsanitary camps with the threat of the Nazi invasion imminent.

This is where the film gets both heartbreaking and full of tension.  I kept wanting to know where we were in the timeline, knowing the time is close to when it would all become impossible.  The parents say goodbye to their children at the train station, wondering if they will ever see them again.

The elderly Winton meets with his friend Martin (Johnathan Pryce) who was his initial contact in Prague.  When he was cleaning out his papers, he found a scrapbook.  Martin suggests the Karl Wiener Institute may want it.

The Germans cross the frontier.  Nazi flags and machine guns appear everywhere. Everything now needs to be approved and stamped by the Gestapo.  The largest transport thus far with 100 children is stopped at the border.  German offices check the children’s documents.  One asks sarcastically, “Why does England want all these Jews?”  Nicky waits anxiously at the other end and is relieved when they arrive.

Weeks later the bells begin tolling in London.  It’s September 1, 1939, and Germany has invaded Poland and World War II begins. Doreen burns all the papers and lists.  Franticly, Trevor and Hana load up the last group of children.

Back in 1987, Grete returns home and is amazed at how much cleaning Nicky has done. The Wiener Institute has taken his papers for their archives.  A French historian, Betty Maxwell (Marthe Keller), wants to see his scrapbook and is moved by all the photos.  He tells her: “It relates back to some time I spent in Prague during the war.  Six hundred and sixty-nine children were successfully placed.  So many other people were involved to make it happen.” She sees all the names and new addresses.

At the back of the scrapbook, there are blank pages.  It was the last train, he says.  Something happened.  250 children were removed by the Gestapo before the train departed.  “That was the end of that.  We had hundreds of foster families waiting.” He is distraught telling her this and goes to the window, trying to suppress his emotions.  What happened to them? he asks.  She says they were probably sent to the camps.  “You may be right,” he says, but I need to keep my imagination in check.” Thinking for a moment, Betty responds. “Fifteen thousand children went to the camps, less than two hundred survived.  And you save six hundred and sixty-nine.  She will ask her husband, the journalist Robert Maxwell, to write an article about this story and this leads to his first appearance on “That’s Life” when he meets Vera, one of the now-grown children.  He’s crying as they look at each other, and she simply says, “Thank you.”  She tells him what happened to her family. Afterwards, he comes home but doesn’t go inside.  Grete finds him sitting by the pool sobbing uncontrollably.  Oh, what a great actor Mr. Hopkins is.  His pain is so palpable, so believable. 

Nicky is hesitant to respond to any more phone calls or requests for meetings or interviews.  Grete wants to protect him from being ambushed again.  But he knows he has to finish this, so he agrees to go on “That’s Life” one more time.  Grete accompanies him this time and they are together when the whole audience stands up and he turns around to so many of the now-grown children he rescued.  It is impossible not to be moved.

James Hawes directed this film with a tremendous cast and a screenplay written by Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake, based on the book by Barbara Winton, Nicky’s daughter. But it is Anthony Hopkins who will make you a believer and “One Life” may just give you the shot of hope needed to face today’s troubled world of war, violence, and human suffering.  One person truly can make a difference.