A One Mann’s Movies review of “One Life” (2023).
“One Life” has been doing the film festival circuit, but I missed it at the London Film Festival. But although it’s not officially released until January 1st, I saw it at a Cineworld Unlimited preview screening this week. It’s excellent, and I’ll be paying a second visit in the New Year with the illustrious Mrs Movie Man.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
Plot Summary:
Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) is an unassuming charity worker living in Maidenhead with his wife Grete (Lena Olin). But he has a fascinating past, having been a sort of “Oscar Schindler” in rescuing hundreds of children from war-torn Czechoslovakia in the period known in history as the “phoney war”.
Certification:
UK: PG; US: NR. (Not yet listed on the BBFC web site).
Talent:
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Lena Olin, Johnny Flynn, Helena Bonham-Carter, Jonathan Pryce, Alex Sharp, Romola Garai, Tom Glenister, Ziggy Heath, Marthe Keller, Samantha Spiro.
Directed by: James Hawes.
Written by: Lucinda Coxon & Nick Drake.
Twitter Handle: #OneLifeMovie.
Running Time: 1h 50m.
A great actor and a great man – Sir Anthony Hopkins plays Sir Nicholas Winton. (Source: Euronews.com).
“One Life” Review:
Positives:
- I mean, you can almost take it as a given that a film starring Sir Anthony Hopkins will impress me. He is simply brilliant in this. As this film isn’t released until January 1st 2024, I wonder if it is only eligible for next year’s Oscars? We will see.
- The supporting cast are also fabulous with Helena Bonham-Carter playing his bossy, no-nonsense mother in fine style and Johnny Flynn playing the young Nicholas Winton. Flynn probably has as much, if not more, of the screen time. And he really is very impressive again. He’s building up a tremendous resumé of great films: Emma, The Dig, Operation Mincemeat, The Outfit are some of my favourites – all solid performances. Although little more than a cameo scene, it was also great to see ‘The Two Popes‘ – Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce – back on the screen together again.
- It’s an astounding story. As the wiki entry for Nicholas Winton observes, the £50 per child required to be raised is equivalent to over £3,400 in today’s money… an unbelievable fundraising achievement outside of all of the other logistical issues.
- Hats off to Samantha Spiro for pulling off an uncanny impersonation of Esther Rantzen in “That’s Life”. The recreation of the show is actually wonderfully accurate as you can see from the BBC archive video here that shows the actual footage. (I’d suggest you only watch this if you’ve already seen the film.) The first show makes up the majority of the video but the snippet of the second show (with the “stand up and turn around” bit) is included at the end.
- My thoughts and best wishes to Esther Rantzen who lives locally to us in The New Forest and was in the news this week regrading her ongoing battle against breast cancer. I hope she beats it.
Negatives:
- I found it a bit distracting that Lena Olin was so much younger (17 years) than Anthony Hopkins… not helped, I have to say, by the Swedish actress looking way younger than her 68 years. When the film started I couldn’t work out the relationship… father and daughter perhaps? I looked it up and in real life Grete Winton was 10 years younger than Nicholas. So there is really not that much of an age gap. But the casting felt a tad off there for me.
- Having looked up the history for this, there seemed to be more depth to the story (including the need to pay off and bribe challenging officials) that doesn’t seem to have been reflected in the film. It felt to me that some of the trips seemed quite ‘easy’, which I’m sure they weren’t. Some more of that peril could have been reflected in the film rather than “oh, here’s another train leaving Prague and here it is arriving at Liverpool Street Station”.
Johnny Flynn plays the younger Winton in fine style. (Source: See-Saw Films).
Summary Thoughts on “One Life”
This is a terrific movie that will be of particular interest to the like-minded ‘silver-dollar’ community of older film-goers. Despite what the poster says, “One Life” will be in UK cinemas from January 1st 2024.
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Trailer for “One Life”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ethollg-PI .
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