Film Journal 2024: One Life

Film Journal 2024: One Life
Directed by James Hawes

If I could make one, simple case for this film, it would be this- One Life is a family movie. And a necessary one at that.

Now, to be clear, the film deals with tough subject matter. It could be a lot for younger viewers. But where I think the film takes strides to wade gently into this darkness, it does so with a visible intention to celebrate the joy and the light. As the film’s main character suggests at one point in the film, a true to life and self proclaimed ordinary Britain who felt compelled to do whatever he could, precisely because he could, to help countless children caught in the most horrific of circumstances (Nazi Germany), we need the power of the imagination to both foster and sustain hope. An imagination the main character needs as he finds himself caught between the dueling forces of defeat and perseverance.

I imagine this film inspiring dialogue across the generations that represent the family, each whom are given a voice and perspective in this film. It might be the case that Hopkins, who plays the aging version of this true to life character, gets most of the focus, but he is simply a starting point. A point of legacy that is both personal and collective. It is from this point that I think the dialogue can reach from the old to the young in ways that make sense of how it is our lives connect.

Speaking of Hopkins, if this film did nothing else it would surely invite us to reflect on his legacy, and what an icon he is as part of the film industry. It is fitting that he plays an aging persona taking stock of his own legacy nearing the end of his life, wrestling through the different ways to tell his story. Which, thematically speaking, is the thing I think the film as a whole really wants to explore. The tension lies within the sometimes insurmountable gap between these two thoughts,
Save one life, save the world
Set alongside this subsequent response by Hopkins’ character when it is suggested he had done enough. He replies by noting, “but it’s never enough, is it.”

The thoughts of a man facing the darkness, desperate to be a light, but doing so in the face of a reality that continues to threaten his ability to imagine that light. And if there is one place this tension pushes him, and us as viewers, it is towards the notion of community.

The final half hour of this film is especially powerful, and will be sure to generate a good deal of tears. A powerful conclusion to a compelling and harrowing journey, one which tries to reconcile tragedy with promise, despair with hope. Fitting then that such reconciliation might come from that connective image of the aging man and the innocent child walking side by side.