Festival darling One Life, starring the incomparable Anthony Hopkins, makes its way to Canadian theatres this weekend from VVS films. Directed by James Hawes, who has honed his craft through a myriad of television projects including Slow Horses, Snowpiercer, Black Mirror, and The Alienist, One Life is another based on true events tale of perseverance through wartime. This time we learn about the story of Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton and his work rehoming children.

During the days preceding England’s involvement in World War II, young Nicky Winton (Johnny Flynn) travels to Prague in an attempt to help with relief efforts as the Germans continue to invade the rest of the country. Moved by the massive amounts of children stuck in camps, living in dilapidated conditions, Nicky sets out to find a way to get the people back home in England to help. Assisted by Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp), Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai), and Hana Hejdukova (Juliana Moska) who stay on the ground in Prague to coordinate, Nicky heads back to London to raise funds and awareness. Aided by his tour de force mother Babi (Helena Bonham Carter), Nicky starts organising trains out of Prague with hundreds of Jewish children on board to head to London. There, volunteer families agree to house them until the war is over and they can return safely home.

The film jumps between these events with young Nicky and 1988 with a now aged Nicky (Anthony Hopkins). After decades of charitable work, Nicky needs to decide what to do with his beloved scrapbook that outlined so many of the children he saved on the trains. Determined to find a proper home where the legacy of the people he worked with and those he saved would not disappear, through a series of events the book ends up in the hands of the producers of the BBC panel show That’s Life! Typically a lighthearted fluff show, That’s Life ends up producing a program around the story that reignites it and sets off a chain of events that change Nicky and his beloved wife Grete’s (Lena Olin) lives forever.

One Life is a stark contrast to some of the more unadulterated looks at the Holocaust, like last year’s The Zone of Interest. This film, in comparison,takes a much more vanilla approach to the horrors of the Holocaust as it skims over more of the truly scary parts. That’s not to say there are no stakes, but in many ways, this feels like a glorified movie of the week writing wise. Two things manage to elevate the film from banality, the first of which is some phenomenal set design work. The set design team had to recreate not just the late 1930s as the world was staring down the barrel of war, but also the late 80s London of the later Nicky Winton and manage to succeed with aplomb. It’s fantastic work that manages to give the film a proper theatrical feeling despite the writing being more pedestrian.

The second thing that elevates this though is the acting. In particular the performances of Anthony Hopkins, Lena Olin, Romola Garai, and Juliana Moska. Garai and Moska do great work providing the human face of people fighting against the war on the frontlines, with Moska’s Hana being Jewish herself and just as much of a target as the people she is desperate to save. Hopkins yet again proves why he is so admired for his abilities as he delivers a powerfully stoic performance. Also, a near unrecognisable Lena Olin also deserves much praise in a much less flashy supporting turn.

A lot fluffier than some of the more in depth and hard hitting films involving the Holocaust, One Life manages to still tell the much less known story of Nicky Winton and his efforts to save Jewish children, dubbed Kindertransport. It’s a film that could have easily dropped off contention and disappeared if not for the performances and wonderful set design already discussed. While this is a fascinating story that I knew nothing about, One Life did make me wonder if there’s a version of this film where they managed to delve deeper into the events of Winton’s work rather than the results of a BBC panel show decades after.