Anthony Hopkins Is a Magnificent Centerpiece in ‘One Life’

Of all the recurring themes at the movies, none is less constant or more prolific than the Holocaust. Every year introduces a few new ones. But although the subject is forever a sober and thoughtful one (to my knowledge, no comedy has ever been made about it, unless you count The Producers and other well-deserved political pokes by Charlie Chaplin, Jack Benny and Mel Brooks at Adolf Hitler, a subject ripe for ridicule if ever there was one) it’s worth remembering that not every film about the Holocaust (or, for that matter, World War II movies in general) is depressing beyond despair. Many are educational, historically illuminating and life-affirmingly positive. Into that category, add One Life, a noble, restrained and admirable footnote to history about Nicholas Winston, a mild-mannered British stockbroker with no driving political interests who saved hundreds of Jewish refugee children from Nazi extinction during the war without any military experience or otherwise personal knowledge about how to fight bureaucracy to improve a world in lethal danger of destruction. In another in a long line of memorable, effective and........

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