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Something must be done
Jan. 28th, 2024 09:24 pmI went to Reading Biscuit Factory this afternoon to see One Life. As has been regularly observed elsewhere, in Britain it is always 1939. Except when it is 1940, or 1944, or... In this case it is 1938. Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker who lives with his mother, takes a trip to Prague for a week to work with a refugee group. What he experiences convinces him to create a plan to evacuate children to the UK. It is simply fundamental humanity, a visceral reaction to the devastating situation. I suspect many people would be tempted to conjure up some deeper reasoning for this action, though none is required.
Winton returns to London to run the logistics of the operation from this side, dealing with UK officialdom, presented here as stolidly but inoffensively bureaucratic, rather than as a hostile environment, although they do adapt over time as the urgency becomes undeniable to all. The trains come to an end with the Nazi invasion of Poland.
This is not one of those war stories that went unknown and undiscovered - at the time there was plenty of publicity, with Winton campaigning to seek foster parents and funding. But it faded - overwhelmed not least by what followed, I suppose - and the portrayal is ambivalent, with Winton regarding his actions as of little consequence. Eventually in a clearing out of old files it emerges that Winton cannot bear to think about those he was not able to save. This sets in chain events that culminate in many of the survivors appearing in the audience on That's Life - something that sounds way more bonkers than Churchill taking the tube, but truth is in this case stranger than fiction. Hopkins's performance is achingly brilliant, and Johnny Flynn's younger Winton works well too (and the two of them are plausibly the same character). Take a handkerchief.
Winton returns to London to run the logistics of the operation from this side, dealing with UK officialdom, presented here as stolidly but inoffensively bureaucratic, rather than as a hostile environment, although they do adapt over time as the urgency becomes undeniable to all. The trains come to an end with the Nazi invasion of Poland.
This is not one of those war stories that went unknown and undiscovered - at the time there was plenty of publicity, with Winton campaigning to seek foster parents and funding. But it faded - overwhelmed not least by what followed, I suppose - and the portrayal is ambivalent, with Winton regarding his actions as of little consequence. Eventually in a clearing out of old files it emerges that Winton cannot bear to think about those he was not able to save. This sets in chain events that culminate in many of the survivors appearing in the audience on That's Life - something that sounds way more bonkers than Churchill taking the tube, but truth is in this case stranger than fiction. Hopkins's performance is achingly brilliant, and Johnny Flynn's younger Winton works well too (and the two of them are plausibly the same character). Take a handkerchief.