One Life Parent Guide

Nicholas Winton (Johnny Flynn) is happily anticipating a Swiss skiing vacation until a phone call from a friend changes his plans – and his life. Martin (Ziggy Heath) is in Prague, and since Hitler seized the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938, the city is filled with refugees in dire need of assistance. Nicholas can’t stand idly by while people suffer, so he heads for the Czech capital.

What the 29-year-old stockbroker sees in Prague breaks his heart. Thousands of people throng ramshackle refugee camps as their children sicken and starve. Driven to help, Nicholas comes up with a plan. The British government will not give visas to Jewish families, but it might be possible to obtain temporary visas for refugee children, provided Nicholas can organize the paperwork, schedule trains, find foster parents in England, and come up with thousands of pounds to pay all the visa deposits. Once he creates accurate files on the children, Nicholas returns to England to save as many of them as he can. But he’s in a race against the clock: the bureaucracy moves slowly and Hitler’s troops are massing on Czechoslovakia’s borders…

The most compelling part of this story is Nicholas Winton himself. In a world torn apart by bigotry and hate, Nicholas Winton’s superpower is decency, rooted in a deeply moral worldview and a commitment to helping his fellow human beings. No one tells him what to do; he simply acts on his own initiative to save others. Remarkably, he remains humble about his achievement, rarely mentioning it in the decades after the war. In fact, rather than celebrating the children he saved, Nicholas is haunted by the ones he failed to rescue, little lives cut short by Hitler’s monstrous war machine.

My only real quibble with this outstanding film is the performance of Sir Anthony Hopkins, who isn’t quite at the top of his game. In the constant struggle between acting and imitating, Hopkins stumbles, self-consciously trying to mimic Nicholas Winton’s mannerisms. It makes the role feel studied and occasionally cracks the immersive power of the story. Thankfully, the rest of the cast are wonderful. Helena Bonham Carter, in particular, shines as Nicholas’s mother, all forceful determination as she whips the British bureaucracy into shape and alternately comforts and cajoles the “army of the ordinary” involved in their monumental project.

One Life is the rarest of films – a powerful, profoundly moving story that is safe for family viewing. Despite its wartime context, there is little bloody violence on screen, aside from mentions of Nazi atrocities and a few perilous moments. Although the violence is carefully sanitized, the movie isn’t always easy to watch. Scenes where desperate parents put their children on trains, knowing they may never see them again, are heartrending. There were audible sniffles in the theater I attended, and I will admit to choking back tears at several points in the film.

Thankfully, other negative content is minimal, and I highly recommend this film for families with teenagers. The story carries powerful messages about selflessness, courage, compassion, ingenuity, and sacrifice – all of which are values we want our teens to internalize. Let me go one step further and recommend that you take your teens to the theater to see the movie. If we vote with our wallets, maybe Hollywood will make more films like One Life.