Chances are good you have seen the extraordinary viral video of elderly London stockbroker Nicolas Winton, given a standing ovation by the grown survivors of the 669 children, mostly Jewish, he rescued from Czechoslovakia before the Nazi occupation closed the borders. Taken from the BBC television show “That’s Life,” it is moving footage that has been viewed millions of times.
“One Life,” a new biopic starring Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Flynn, Jonathan Pryce and Helena Bonham Carter, and now playing in theatres, provides the background of the much-viewed video and the man known as the “British Schindler.”
Based on the book “If It’s Not Impossible…: The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton” by Barbara Winton, the film toggles back-and-forth between 1987 London and 1938 Czechoslovakia. In the contemporary scenes Winton (Hopkins) is in retirement, puttering around a house stuffed with memories, paperwork and artefacts from his past. He continues his charitable work, still haunted that he was not able to save more children, while his wife Grete (Lena Olin) urges him to clear out the ephemera of the past and slow down. “Why would I want to slow down?” he asks.
Played by Flynn in the flashbacks, Winton is on assignment for the British Committee for Refugees From Czechoslovakia. In Prague, taken by the plight of the stranded children he encounters, the hunger and the mortal danger the impending Nazi occupation, he puts into motion the massive relocation of hundreds of children. Through money raising efforts, arranging visas and foster care, he spirits nine trainloads of children, through precarious circumstances, to safety in Britain.
The famous viral video, in which Winton is finally able to see, and maybe for the first time, understand, the results of his work, is recreated to great emotional effect. But even as his status as a national hero grows, he grumbles, “This is not about me.”
As the latter-day Winton, Hopkins gives a quietly powerful performance. It is empathetic work colored by the guilt Winton carried. “I’ve learned to keep my imagination in check,” he says, referring to the children left behind, “so I don’t go raving mad.” In a restrained movie, it is his inner work that bursts forth, making us feel the immense impact of Winton’s work.
“One Life” is a potent story of doing the right thing, trapped in a staid historical biopic, but given life by the emotional story and performances.
“The Two Popes” is an odd couple buddy picture about a friendship that proves that sometimes opposites attract.
The fact-based story (i.e. Based on a true story) begins in 2005 with the papal conclave to name a new Pope. The two main candidates, Cardinal Ratzinger (Anthony Hopkins) from Germany and Argentina’s Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) represent polar opposites in terms of approach. Ratzinger is an intellectual bound to tradition. “Whenever I try and be myself people don’t seem to like me much,” he says. Bergoglio is affable, a humble man who can be heard whistling “Dancing Queen” in the halls. “I’m Argentinian,” he says. “Tango and football are compulsory.”
A vote and a puff of white smoke later Ratzinger becomes Pope Benedict while Bergoglio returns to his home country to continue his grass roots ministry.
Cut to seven years later. Pope Benedict is embroiled in a child abuse scandal that sees one of his aides sent to jail and seeks the council of someone whose ideas he formerly rejected, his rival Bergoglio. The two men meet, talk doctrine and just when it seems like they will never find common ground Pope Benedict reveals why he summoned the Argentinian cardinal. “The church needs change,” he says, “and you could be that change.” Because of health issues and controversy Pope Benedict wants to retire, to become the first Pope in 700 years to step down. “I can no longer sit on the chair of St. Peter,” he says. “I cannot play this role anymore.”
History fills in the rest of the details, so no spoilers here.
While we will never know the exact nature of the real conversations between the two, “The Two Popes” finds a compelling dynamic between them. The film’s opening moments is a highly spirited recreation of the race between the two candidates. It’s fast, crowded and showy but then, as we jump ahead in time, director Fernando Meirelles slows the pace down to focus attention on the conversations. The pleasure of “The Two Popes” is watching two very good actors create worlds with their monologues. The flashbacks, including an extended sequence that details Bergoglio’s regrets over the decisions he made during his country’s Dirty War in the 1970s, add backstory and detail, but this movie is at its best when it is at its simplest, unadorned and in conversation.
Around this time of year “A Christmas Carol” is omnipresent. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge’s journey of redemption, courtesy of three mysterious Christmas ghosts, runs on an endless Yuletide television loop and has been adapted as an opera, ballet, a Broadway musical, animation and even a BBC mime production starring Marcel Marceau.
A new film, “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” aims to tell the story behind the story. “Downton Abbey’s” Dan Stevens plays Charles Dickens, the Victorian writer who, when we first meet him, is out of ideas and money. “My light’s gone out,” he moans. When he devises a Christmas story, his publishers, who have gotten rich off his previous works, scoff. The holiday season isn’t a big enough deal for their readers, and it’s only six weeks away. How can he finish a novel and how can they publish it in such a short time? He perseveres and we see how real life inspiration and his imagination collide to create the self-published book that redefined Christmas celebrations for generations to come.
Using flashbacks to Dickens’s childhood in London’s workhouses and dramatic recreations of encounters with the characters—including Christopher Plummer as Scrooge—that would soon populate his book, the film attempts to show “the blessed inspiration that put such a book into the head of Charles Dickens.”
Often more literal than literate, “The Man Who Invented Christmas” is handsome film that plays like a series of “a ha” moments than a serious exploration of the creative process. What it does, however, is entertainingly paint a picture of life in Dickens’s Victorian home, and the external influences that sparked his imagination.
As Scrooge Plummer hands in a performance that makes us wish he’d play the character for real. In a very likable portrayal Stevens links Scrooge’s transformation to Dickens as he battles his own personal demons on his way to personal redemption. All bring a light touch and even when the going gets tough there is an endearing quality to the material. Even the condescending critic William Makepeace Thackery (Miles Jupp) isn’t played with malice.
“The Man Who Invented Christmas” is a festive film, a movie for the holidays that reminds us of the spirit of the season. No “Bah! Humbugs” here.
“Hysteria” could easily have been called “Desperate Housewives (of 1880).” Set in 19th century London, the story centers around Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) — a young handsome doctor whose carpal tunnel syndrome led directly to the invention of the vibrator.
The year is 1880 and hysteria is “the plague of our times,” according to Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), a doctor whose magic fingers bring relief to London’s upper class ladies. His solution to their dilemma is simple. He offers manual stimulation until his patients achieve “paroxysm.”
In those days hysteria was a catchall phrase used to encompass all manner of female ailments. According to Wikipedia, “women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and ‘a tendency to cause trouble.'”
Enter Granville, an idealistic doctor who keeps losing jobs at old-fashioned hospitals because of his new-fangled ideas about germs. He accepts an apprenticeship with Dalrymple and soon his nimble fingers and good looks have attracted the attention London’s desperate housewives and daughter Emily Dalrymple (Felicity Jones). She’s an English Rose who stands in contrast to her sister Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a live wire suffragette who is passionate about working with the city’s disadvantaged.
Business booms at the doctor’s office until Granville suffers hand and wrist ailments from vigorous overuse. In short order he co-invents the world’s first vibrator with the help of his friend Lord Edmund St. John-Smythe (Rupert Everett). He also discovers true love and the true nature of hysteria.
Despite its racy premise “Hysteria” is rather tame. As social commentary it’s lightweight, shedding little light on the repressive Victorian attitude toward women and sexuality. Sure, the female patients know exactly what the cause of their so-called hysteria is and Gyllenhaal speechifies on women’s rights, but a movie about the invention of the tool that revolutionized sexuality should focus on that and not the predictable rom-com love triangle.
As a comedy it misses the opportunity for big laughs by under-using Everett, whose hammy performance breaks through the stodgy Englishness repressiveness of the setting. The slapstick and masturbation hat make up much of the movie and wears out their welcome early on.
Still, there is something inoffensive about the movie. It’s a sweet attempt to tell an unusual story, but feels like a missed opportunity — which is why “Hysteria” didn’t work for me as well as it might have. I expected more than a comedy of manners with an off-colour edge from the story. This is a rental, not a night out.
