I’ve just watched One Life at the Beacon cinema in Eastbourne (the town is name-checked in the film, one of the key government officials is not available at a crucial moment because he is having a week there by the sea).
The film itself is very conventional. It flits between 1988 and 1938. Nicholas Winton is a young man in 1938 who visits Prague and discovers refugees fleeing Hitler; he determines to bring as many refugee children as possible to England. He organises visas and foster families and funds and trains and managed in the end to rescue 669 on eight trains (the ninth was stopped by the Nazis). In 1988 he is looking back on a life of charity endeavour, trying to interest historians in his scrapbook of memories. The BBC TV programme ‘That’s Life’ hears of his work and invites him to the audience where he meets one of the children he had saved, now a grown woman. He is invited back the next week ... and virtually the whole studio audience consists of children he had saved.
There’s nothing special about the story or the production or the acting. Anthony Hopkins gives a typically understated performance as Winton 1988 and Helena Bonham Carter an excellent performance as Winton’s mum in 1938 but for me they were both bettered by Johnny Flynn as Winton 1938. There are some moments of sadness, as brothers are parted (and you know what happens to the one left behind) and as one 12-year-old girl, who is looking after a foundling baby, disappears (and you know she is dead). But when the That’s Life audience stood up at the end I was so overcome with emotion that I could scarcely prevent myself from sobbing out loud. Even writing about that scene has made me teary all over again. Wow!
The film received 89% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average audience rating of 4.7 out of 5. The Guardian only gave it 3/5 stars, calling it workmanlike but predictable (although “lifted by a stellar cast”) and suggesting that it compares poorly to Schindler’s List. Hard competition! Both the Guardian and Film magazine (3 stars 18/24) note the empathy between the performances of Flynn and Hopkins; the Guardian points out that they have the same mannerisms, enabling viewers to see them as the same man 50 years apart. 1MDb gives it 7.7/10.
The Guardian makes interesting points about the colour palette of the film: there are more greys in the 1938 shots and it is warmer in 1988; the camera is also steadier in 1988 compared to 1938.
Whatever. It made me cry.
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