But it’s in the scenes from the late 80s, which slowly start to take centre stage, that the film finds more original footing, exploring with nuance the realities of living with the weight of doing so much yet thinking of it as so little. Flynn is a convincingly obsessive problem-solver, with help from a steely Romola Garai in Prague (someone please give her a legal procedural already) and a tenacious Helena Bonham-Carter as his mother in London, and there’s an undeniable wrench from the familiar yet poignant images of little hands waving goodbye to parents they’re never going to see again.
A LITTLE LIFE SPARKNOTES TV
It’s an involving back-and-forth through time but in the scenes from the late 30s, small screen director James Hawes often struggles to visually distinguish his film from so many second world war dramas that have come before, reverting to the safety of his TV roots. Embarrassed by the idea of demanding attention for what he had done, he learned to almost bury it, telling himself that anyone would have acted in the same way and that thinking too much about it would cause him to focus on those who were left behind. Played by Johnny Flynn as a youth, he’s a man driven by an unstoppable need to help and as his older self, played by Hopkins, he’s a man haunted by never helping enough.
We see his work play out via flashbacks as the elder Winton sorts through files and papers he’s long been hoarding, much to the chagrin of his wife. His plan to save them was dismissed as naive by those more hardened by what they had seen and what they had found not to be possible but he returned to London determined to help and with the assistance of his equally dogged mother, he started gathering visas and finding homes. He headed to Prague in 1938, despite the cautions of his well-intentioned mother, and found himself immediately horrified by the situation so many of the young refugees were in, most unlikely to survive the winter. It’s a story of radical bravery, of Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker gripped by a need to do something as Europe neared the start of the second world war. The film might, at times, feel more like a BBC TV drama (it does come from BBC Films among others) with some pedestrian film-making touches but it builds towards a last act of towering emotion, with few dry eyes at its Toronto film festival premiere.
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