I don’t often do movies reviews, partly because I rarely watch recent films. I haven’t been to the theaters to see a movie since Avengers: Endgame (2019). But per the Critical Drinker’s recommendation, I borrowed the 2024 film One Life, and amid a snowstorm I enjoyed a cozy night in with a wonderful film (and some tears).
I was not going to give a premise of the plot (those are dull to write, duller to read, and you can find one elsewhere), nor a synopsis with spoilers. But if you’re like me, you don’t want to look one up since they tell too much. So if you have seen it already, skip this paragraph to get to my critique. If you want a brief premise, read on. The film takes place in the 1980s, but goes back and forth between the present and the late 1930s, following Nickolas “Nicky” Winton, an elderly Englishman who during the outbreak of WWII worked to help child refugees in Prague. The story begins with him in the present, but often reminiscing of the past, and looking through his old scrapbook at pictures of the children. Early in the film it cuts back to 1938, when he travelled to Prague just after Hilter’s invasion of Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland), and then follows his motivations, trials, and endeavors then and now.
Per my usual breakdown of writing (including plot, story structure, etc.), characters, and themes, here follow my thoughts on the film.
Story: Exposition Well Done
Beginning with the story, it was excellent, and felt shorter than it was, despite extended cuts with no dialogue. Each scene, each part of each scene, was intentional on the director’s part, and rich on the actors’ parts. There are two aspects I want to note especially. First, the film does a good job of showing, without telling. You’d think this would be easier in film, but modern cinema begs to differ. In One Life, the characters never say anything without it sounding like something they would indeed say. (This is the challenge of showing without telling, both in film and books, since there are things that truly go without saying but which the audience must learn.) The dialogue exposits, but in a natural way. Often enough they don’t exposit. Nicky does not always say what he means, particularly in his conversation with Martin in the present day. People talk around things. When they do say what they mean, they say it bluntly, or stammer, pause, and ramble while trying to formulate their thoughts. A case in point would be when Nicky is trying to convince Doreen to let him find a way to help the children in Prague. She is blunt, direct, and critical, which makes sense for someone who has seen what she has. He is hopeful, out of his depths, but strengthened by his imagination and a benevolence that will not refuse to help those most in need.
Second, the back-and-forth from the present to the past was well paced, never dragging. The past informed the present, with the present increasing in tension and weight because of the viewer’s increasing knowledge of the past. There was one scene, barely a scene, that caught my attention. At one point, when we are deep in the story of Prague, it cuts to Nicky in the present—alone at home, at night, staring off in remembrance—then it cuts back to Prague. This is the only time the film does this, to my memory. I think the reason is that the film is showing us that these are not two separate stories, connected only accidentally. It is reminding us that these “flashbacks” are not simply so the audience knows the past (and because it would be awkward to show all of the past, and then all of the present). The story is being told this way for a reason. We are inside Nicky’s mind. He is almost constantly dwelling on the past. It shows in his clutter, his expressions, his conversations, his looking through the scrapbook, and in these, his own thoughts, constantly going back to Prague. The back-and-forth between past and present is not actually achronological: They are intermingled, the past constantly pressing in against the present. The present and the past flow together for the viewer, as they do for Nicky.
Extraordinary Actors & Ordinary Characters
Sir Anthony Hopkins’ every word, stammer, glance, and movement was imbued with Nicky’s designs and objectives. I don’t think I have been so impressed with an actor in a while. Helena Bonham Carter was my second-favorite actor. But the whole cast filled the story with characters that, to me, I cannot separate from the actors, and so continue to think of them as real people and reflect on their choices and fates. So it should be in any film.
Army of the Ordinary
At one point, Nicky, Doreen, Trevor, and Hana are talking together in Prague, and the conversation goes like this:
Nicky: Ordinary people wouldn’t stand for this if they knew was was actually happening.
Doreen: You have a lot of faith in ordinary people.
Nicky: I do. Because I’m an ordinary person.
Trevor: So am I.
Hana: And me.
Trevor: Well, there ya go. That’s just what we need, isn’t it? An army of the ordinary.
This theme of the ordinary doing something extraordinary, comprises several of the other themes as well. Nicky is in some ways humble, in other ways self-deprecating. He shows part of what it is to be high-minded: benevolent but willing to use his own gifts to the utmost; not selfishly ambitious but rather zealous for good; magnanimous in having his “emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments,” as C. S. Lewis writes (The Abolition of Man). As his mother states elsewhere, she raised him to be decent and kind, values she admired in the English. But he lacks humility in his inability to accept what he cannot do, and to be satisfied in what he has done. I do not mean that he has, as Martin says, “done enough”—to which Nicky replies that it’s never enough, is it? I agree. It is not. There is not point at which we may permanently rest from our labors, till we lie in the grave. But there is a humility in being grateful and proud of what we have done, of having used our gifts well. This is what Nicky must gain. But this is not possible, not really, until he comes to gratitude for what he was able to accomplish. Just as an unhealthy shame comes from vain pride, and is cured by true humility, so self-deprecation also comes from vain pride, and is cured by gratitude. It is difficult to make it to this point, which Hopkins portrays well. To be humbled so, may nearly break a man. But as Peter Kreeft wrote, the only whole heart is the broken heart.
Longfellow writes that the architects of fate—which are all men—work with the blocks of todays and yesterdays. Nicky’s struggle is to link these, to remember the past but live in the present. It is gratitude, which leads to joy and hope, which lets him do this. Gratitude does not erase the pain—which often is part and parcel of what we are grateful for—but sees the good and its outcome so far. As one character tells Nicky in the present, 15,000 children went to Nazi camps in Czechoslovakia. Only about 200 survived. But he worked to rescue 669, over three times the amount of camp survivors.
In true humility, we see ourselves as ordinary, but capable of extraordinary things. Nicky’s faith in ordinary people is ironic, given that WWII and the holocaust proved (if it needed proving) that ordinary people are fallen and capable of grave evil—indeed tend that way, unless taught otherwise, unless raised to be “decent” men, as Nicky’s mother puts it. People do not naturally rise to the occasion, but fall back on training and habit. I understand Nicky was expressing an idea on which his socialist ideals depended. And some may say that the holocaust and WWII do not prove human nature one way or the other, since many ordinary people did evil things, and many also did good things. I would say that if you have studied history, or reflected much on your own life, or even spent much time with an untrained toddler, then you have seen what untrained human nature does. We must be trained. We must learn, and then create habits of doing good. Hitler had an army of ordinary people, not only permitted to do evil, but trained to do evil. But an army of ordinary people also did good and great deeds in stern days.
“Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days — the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.” -Sir Winston Churchill
“One Life” is a story of an ordinary man who chose to do good, in his own part, with little hope of ever seeing what came of it. A man tells Nicky there is a Hebrew saying, which translated is: “Do not start what you cannot finish.” Christ said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Good beginnings, without perseverance, are fruitless. It was not the faithfulness of ordinary men, sticking to their generally good nature, but the courage of ordinary men, standing tall amid the tide, that did good when it was easy to do nothing, and made great deeds out of little ones done for the sake of what is right.
All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen. In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Make the house, where Gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean. Else our lives are incomplete, Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they seek to climb. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure Shall to-morrow find its place. Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Builders"
The Curious Critic 