Producers: Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Joanna Laurie and Guy Heeley   Director: James Hawes   Screenplay:  Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake   Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Flynn, Helena Bonham Carter, Lena Olin, Romola Garai, Alex Sharp, Ziggy Heath, Samantha Spiro, Marthe Keller, Samuel Finzi and Jonathan Pryce   Distributor: Bleecker Street

Grade: B

It’s a story that’s been told repeatedly over the years with different protagonists—how one person acted courageously to save Jews from the Nazi Final Solution.  In “One Life” the focus is on Nicholas Winton, a man whom the press dubbed “The British Schindler” after his efforts, which resulted in rescuing 669 refugee children during the German takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39, were revealed to the world in a 1988 television broadcast after having gone unrecognized for decades.    

Based on the 2014 book “If It’s Not Impossible: The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton” by Winton’s daughter Barbara, James Hawes’s film, solidly made if not particularly imaginative, is bifurcated, moving back and forth between two timeframes.  Approximately one half of the narrative is set in the late 1980s, as Winton (Anthony Hopkins), prodded by his wife Grete (Lena Olin), begins clearing out his home office.  

Among the materials he intends to move are boxes of papers concerning his work in evacuating Czech refugees during the German occupation five decades earlier, and a scrapbook in which he’d carefully assembled photos and information about the children that had been rescued.  His aim is to find a suitable repository for the records where they won’t simply gather dust, but actually be studied and reflected upon.  He approaches journalists about the story they tell, but is rebuffed with disinterest.  And he consults old comrades in arms like Martin Blake (Jonathan Pryce), who’d in 1938 asked Winton to forego a planned ski trip and join him in Czechoslovakia instead, for suggestions.

Eventually Winton is able to take the scrapbook in person to Elizabeth Maxwell, wife of larger-than-life Czech-born media mogul Robert Maxwell, who himself had escaped his Nazi-occupied homeland, and she proves instrumental in getting it into the hands of Esther Ranzen (Samantha Spiro), host of the BBC program “That’s Life!”  It’s on that program that Winton’s story is broadcast and he’s reintroduced to many of those he’d helped to save, along with their families.

This portion of the film is complemented by extensive flashbacks showing the young Winton (Johnny Flynn) coming to Czechoslovakia in 1938 at the behest of Blake (Ziggy Heath) and becoming part of a network of workers, including Brits Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai) and Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp) as well as Czech volunteers, who are working to make contact with displaced families and assembling the names of children in need of transport out of the country, negotiating not just with parents but with individuals like a rabbi (Samuel Finzi) concerned that the information he provides could be misused. In the process Winton meets many of the children themselves, including one young girl caring for an infant from an unknown family. 

Using his organizational skills, Winton, with the help of his equally determined mother Babi (Helena Bonham Carter), works to navigate the processes demanded by the British bureaucracy—securing visas and medical certificates for each child, as well as sponsors who will not only agree to take them in as foster parents but pay a fee to ensure they would not be a burden on the public dole–and that in addition to arranging for the trains that formed the Czech arm of the famous Kindertransport.  Wrenching scenes at the Prague railway station reach a shattering conclusion when the declaration of war in September, 1939, stops the process—and halts a last train filled with passengers as those still working with the program in Czechoslovakia must themselves flee as best they can.

The period settings in both halves of the film, shot in Czechoslovakia and England, are handily created by production designer Christina Moore, costumer Joanna Eatwell and cinematographer Zac Nicholson, and Lucia Zucchetti’s editing moves smoothly between one era and the other.  As comparison with the actual broadcasts demonstrate, special care was taken in recreating the BBC sequences, and Volker Bertelmann’s score complements the action without becoming overbearing.

Among the cast, Hopkins naturally stands out as the elder Winton, nicely expressing the man’s practical, matter-of-fact persona while showing his dedication to doing the right thing and his underlying regret over not having been able to do more; as his younger self, Flynn is a bit too stiff-upper-lip, but exudes integrity and compassion.  It’s also a tribute to the humility Winton always showed that his insistence that the program was a team effort is captured in the screenplay’s depiction of the work done by Blake, Warriner, Chadwick, Babi and many others, both British and Czech, who are portrayed with appropriate intensity by Garai, Sharp, Heath, and especially Carter; the latter’s stern interactions with foot-dragging British bureaucrats will make viewers smile.  One of the film’s historical strengths lies in depicting the reluctance of Britain to take in victims of Nazi oppression, a criticism that of course can be applied to other of the Western democracies as well.

The story told in “One Life” may be familiar, but it’s one that bears repeating, especially now.  Sober and straightforward, it delivers a touching but not maudlin combination of poignance and uplift.  

Producer: Louise Vesth   Director: Nikolaj Arcel   Screenplay: Anders Thomas Jensen and Nikolaj Arcel    Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Amanda Collin, Simon Bennebjerg, Melina Hagberg, Kristine Kujath Thorp, Gustav Lindh, Søren Malling, Morten Hee Andersen, Jacob Lohmann, Magnus Krepper, Thomas W. Gabrielsson, Laura Bilgrau, Hans Christian Lundgren, Morten Burian, Olaf Højgaard and Felix Kramer     Distributor: Magnolia Films

Grade: B

Nikolaj Arcel’s film is based on history—specifically the introduction of settled agriculture to Denmark’s inhospitable Jutland health in the mid-eighteenth century, with a focus on the efforts of ex-soldier Ludvig Kahlen.  But it’s not, strictly speaking, historical, since details of Kahlen’s enterprise are scanty.  Rather it’s an adaptation of a 2022 novel, “Kaptajnen og Ann Barbara,” by Ida Jessen, which turned it into a romantic epic of good versus evil. 

As played by Mads Mikkelsen, who previously collaborated with Arcej on another excellent period drama “A Royal Affair,” Kahlen is a dour, laconic veteran who wins approval for his proposal from the royal administrators of Frederick V simply because the monarch, somewhat of a progressive despite a tendency toward hedonism, longed to see the heath made productive.  Kahlen, the illegitimate son of a nobleman who’d had to make his own way in the world (thus the film’s Danish title “Bastarden”), immediately attracts the enmity of the local landowner Frederich De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), a cynical and cruel man who’s arbitrarily assumed a noble change to his commoner name and enjoys tyrannizing his tenant workers.  Resenting any threat to his absolute control of the region, he wants to see the newcomer, who constructs a farm he calls the King’s House, compelled to return to the south as quickly as possible.  He even tries, unsuccessfully, to bribe Kahlen into aborting his plans. 

That explains Kahlen’s inability to attract workers to the fields he hopes to plant with potatoes, which he thinks resilient enough to survive in the poor soil and harsh climate; even the outcast Romani folk called Taters (tatere or tattare) abandon him when threatened by Schinkel, and in time his only helpers are a tenant couple who have fled from the landowner and are now fugitives.  Introduced to him by the supportive local pastor Eklund (Gustav Lindh), Johannes Eriksen (Morten Hee Andersen) and his wife Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin) become Kahlen’s steward and housekeeper—until Schinkel captures Johannes and tortures him to death as entertainment at a ball where Kahlen must helplessly watch the execution.

Kahlen’s presence at the ball is the result of an invitation not from Schinkel but from his cousin Helene (Kristine Kujath Thorp), whom her debt-ridden father has sent north to marry the wealthy lord.  But Helene resists committing to the marriage, and is attracted to Kahlen instead.  And though Ann Barbara threatens to leave Kahlen’s employ when she learns of Johannes’ death, she relents and remains, becoming something more than a housekeeper to him and a surrogate mother to Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg), a dark-skinned Tater girl who flees to Kahlen’s home, and whom he protects even when German colonists dispatched to Kahlen by the king, considering her unlucky, demand that he send her away.

When Schinkel’s schemes to force Kahlen to leave descend to violence against the settlers, the ex-soldier uses his military training to retaliate, but doing so brings him into conflict with the law, giving Schinkel a legal excuse to destroy him.  It’s only the intervention of Ann Barbara and Helene that saves him from Johannes’ fate, though it means disaster for Ann Barbara in the process.

The film ends with a coda set some years later, bringing royal recognition to Kahlen for his achievements and a handsome Tater suitor (Hans Christian Lundgren) for the grown-up Anmai Mus (now played by Laura Bilgrau).  But Kahlen receives information from long-time friend Trappaud (Jacob Lohmann) of Ann Barbara’s dire future that tests his determination to continue his work in the heath as well as his loyalty to the crown. 

In many respects “The Promised Land” has the structure of a classic Hollywood Western, an archetypal tale of a newcomer whose arrival brings reprisal from the local landowner—a typical farmer versus rancher scenario.  But as captured by production designer Jette Lehmann, costumer Kicki Ilander and cinematographer Rasmus Videbæk, the striking locations and period timeframe give it a distinctive look, and though it moves at a stately pace, Arcel and editor Olivier Bugge Coutté ensure that it doesn’t drag.  Dan Romer’s score adds to the atmosphere as well.                        

As might be expected, the formidable Mikkelsen anchors the film with a performance of dour intensity, projecting Kahlen’s indomitability and refusal to buckle under to Schinkel, whom the sneering Bennebjerg makes a villain you’ll love to hate.  Collin, Hagberg and Thorp draw sharp contrasts as the very different females in Kahlen’s life, and among the uniformly capable supporting cast scrawny Lindh cuts an especially memorable figure, while Lohmann provides some welcome comic relief as the ever-complaining Trappaud. 

“The Promised Land” should definitely not be taken as history; it’s unabashedly a historically-based romantic drama that uses old-fashioned tropes and inventions to contrive a classic tale of grit against privilege.  If taken in the right spirit, it will prove immensely satisfying.