One Life: A stunning Holocaust story

One Life (2024) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.15.24

Save one life, save the entire world.

 

Until this moment, it’s safe to assume that London stockbroker Nicholas “Nicky” Winton was unknown, here in the States, notwithstanding the 2014 publication of If It’s Not Impossible by his daughter, Barbara Winton.

 

In London, Nicholas "Nicky" Winton (Johnny Flynn) awaits the arrival of a train 
carrying a very special set of passengers.

And yet Oskar Schindler and Winton are revered for the same reason, and director James Hawes’ One Life is an equally moving spiritual cousin of 1993’s Schindler’s List.

There’s no indication of the miracle Winton orchestrated, as Hawes’ film opens. It’s 1988, and an elderly Nicky (Anthony Hopkins) has retired to a lovely countryside home that he shares with his wife, Grete (Lena Olin). He’s at loose ends, but she’s at wit’s end; Nicky’s lifetime of humanitarian work is catalogued in mountains of boxes that have taken over several rooms; there’s no space for them to enjoy the grandchild that their daughter and son-in-law soon will add to the family.

 

Of particular note: the contents of a battered brown suitcase, which rests inside a lower desk drawer.

 

Nicky’s malaise goes deeper. He’s deeply troubled by something that has haunted him for a very long time; Hopkins conveys all this via posture, a weary gaze, and an aura of regret that enshrouds him like a cloak.

 

We then flash back to December 1938, as young Nicky (Johnny Flynn) abruptly cancels a skiing holiday after receiving a telephone request for help from Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai) and Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp). They’re in Prague, helping refugees who’ve fled persecution from Austria and Germany, into Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.

 

Nicky hastily travels to Prague, where he’s stunned by the magnitude of the crisis. The streets are filled with homeless people and families; food and shelter are scarce, and the cruel bite of winter has just begun. Most particularly, he’s appalled by the huge number of children in such a state: particularly vulnerable little bodies unlikely to survive the upcoming months of brutal weather.

 

Hawes doesn’t dwell on this misery, but cinematographer Zac Nicholson’s tracking shot pauses at key moments, highlighting forlorn individuals who establish the magnitude of this crisis.

 

Nicky impulsively insists that something must be done, which initially exasperates Doreen and Trevor, who gently scoff at Nicky’s naïvete. He’s a posh London stockbroker with virtually no experience in such matters; what could he possibly do, that boots-on-the-ground crisis workers haven’t been able to achieve?

Operation Mincemeat: Very well done

Operation Mincemeat (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for brief war violence, disturbing images and brief profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.20.22

World War II has long gifted cinema with a wealth of heroic, unusual and downright astonishing stories … but none is more bizarre or audacious than this one.

 

Having been fully briefed about the necessary parameters, North London coroner
Bentley Purchase (Paul Ritter, center) pulls out a cadaver that might suit the requirements
of Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth, far right) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen).

In early 1943, the Allies desperately sought a means to break the Nazi stranglehold on mainland Europe, but the only feasible route appeared to be invading Sicily and then pushing northward. Unfortunately, this lone option was tooobvious; Hitler also recognized it as the likely approach, and was fully prepared to thwart such an effort with the full might of the German army. The loss of Allied lives would have been incalculable.

 

A few years earlier, Lt. Cmdr. Ian Fleming — then assigned to Rear Adm. James Godfrey, head of British naval intelligence — had drafted what came to be known as the “Trout Memo.” (Yes, that Ian Fleming. Seriously.)

 

The memo — “Trout,” as in hoping to fool the Nazis hook, line and sinker — contained 54 suggested schemes designed to deceive the Axis Powers. Item 28 was a macabre ploy that Fleming lifted from 1937’s The Milliner’s Hat Mystery, one of several Inspector Richardson mysteries by British author Basil Thomson.

 

So, consider: A now-obscure novelist gives British naval intelligence the idea for a daring act of real-world espionage duplicity, as proposed by an officer — Fleming — who would go on to create the world’s best-known fictitious secret agent.

 

No surprise, then, that this legendary bit of WWII lore would appeal to director John Madden, who similarly played with the historical line between real and make-believe, in 1998’s Shakespeare in Love. Michelle Ashford’s engaging script is adapted from Ben Macintyre’s meticulously researched 2010 nonfiction bestseller of the same title.

 

The resulting film is fascinating. Ashford has done an impressive job of condensing the many key details, without losing track of the saga’s complexity … and while adding a few fictitious embellishments for dramatic intensity. (I’d argue they were unnecessary, but opinions might differ.)

 

The key players here are barrister-turned-naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth); Royal Air Force flight lieutenant-turned-MI5 counter-intelligence agent Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen); Godfrey (Jason Isaacs), who oversaw what eventually developed into “Operation Mincemeat”; MI5 clerk Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald), who played a key role in the scheme; and MI5 head secretary Hester Leggett (Penelope Wilton), whose talent for credible love letters also proved crucial.

 

The Outfit: Well tailored

The Outfit (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence and frequent profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

The show must go on, as the venerable saying goes, and two years’ worth of Covid restrictions and limitations forced filmmakers to think way outside the box.

 

Sometimes — as in this case — with remarkably clever results.

 

Leonard (Mark Rylance) and his assistant, Mable (Zoey Deutch), are about to endure
an unusual — and increasingly dangerous — night.

Graham Moore makes a stylish feature directorial debut with The Outfit, a cheeky period crime thriller laden with Hitchcockian touches. Moore and co-scripter Johnathan McClain have concocted a claustrophobic, tension-laden scenario that would succeed equally well as a stage play, but doesn’t feel the slightest bit constrained as a cinematic experience.

(Moore shared an Academy Award for co-scripting 2014’s equally engaging The Imitation Game. He definitely has a way with plot and well-sculpted characters.)

 

The setting is early 1950s Chicago. Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance), a soft-spoken ex-pat Brit, has established a successful corner-shop career as a talented maker of fine suits. (“I’m a cutter,” he patiently insists, more than once, “not a tailor.”) 

 

Moore opens the film with a lengthy sequence as Leonard explains his craft — in voiceover — while we watch how a suit emerges from paper patterns and four different kinds of fabric. Because of the quietly reverential quality of Rylance’s narration, and the fascinating process itself — so esoteric, and highlighted by an old-world attention to precision — this prologue is totally captivating.

 

(If you assume this introduction is insignificant, think again; Leonard’s calmly measured recitation has an ingenious third-act payoff.)

 

Leonard’s customers are greeted by Mable (Zoey Deutch), his receptionist/assistant. Their relationship is friendly and cordial; the affection and mutual respect are obvious … although Leonard, wholly at peace with his place in the world, is amused by Mable’s restlessness.

 

But not everybody coming through the front door is a customer. Numerous daily visitors bypass Mable — she never looks up — and head straight to Leonard’s rear cutting room, where they place sealed packets into a lockbox. The shop is a drop-off point for protection money payments, and the neighborhood is under the thumb of organized crime.

 

As it happens, Leonard’s best customer, Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale), is the local boss.

The Dig: A captivating excavation

The Dig (2021) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for brief sensuality and fleeting partial nudity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.26.21

Director Simon Stone’s well-seasoned character drama, available via Netflix, is a thoroughly absorbing slice of old-style British filmmaking: a fascinating, fact-based story inhabited by engaging characters, set in England’s luxuriously verdant countryside.

 

After a harrowing reminder that amateur excavation can be quite dangerous, Edith Pretty
(Carey Mulligan) makes sure that archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) has
suffered no more than a terrible fright.

The countryside in question is Suffolk, the year 1939: just as Britain is battening down the hatches in anticipation of war with Germany. Odd, then, that widowed aristocratic landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) chooses this moment to investigate the large barrows (burial mounds) that dot her 526-acre Sutton Hoo estate (but, well, the actual Pretty did just that).

 

Such mounds were prevalent throughout much of the United Kingdom at this point in time, and it was accepted wisdom that — if they contained anything at all — the contents likely would date back to the Viking era. Edith has no reason to expect otherwise, but even Viking artifacts would be worthy of museum preservation.

 

She hires local archaeologist/excavator Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to investigate; after surveying the various mounds, he settles on a particularly large one. The digging is arduous, painstaking and slow, even with the help of a few estate workers. As the days and weeks pass, with Edith and her adolescent son Robert (Archie Barnes) taking an active interest — and since Basil is living on the estate — he becomes a welcome part of the family.

 

That’s no small thing, since the working-class Basil is akin to a servant himself. But Edith clearly gives no thought to that sort of thing: a deliberate contrast to the way Basil is regarded as “lesser” by his archaeological peers, since he’s self-taught after having left school at age 12.

 

Nothing is quite as condescending as British class snobbery, and Fiennes does a marvelous job of imbuing Basil with quiet dignity and patient resolve, when confronted by it. His deepening bond with Edith and Robert notwithstanding, he also tends toward obsession, ignoring frequent letters from his wife, May (Monica Dolan).

 

Basil becomes convinced that these Sutton Hoo barrows might pre-date the Viking era (eighth to 11th century): in fact, might be Anglo-Saxon (as early as the fifth century). Naturally, his disdainful colleagues dismiss this notion.

 

Then Basil finds some iron rivets. A ship’s iron rivets. (Bear in mind, we’re well inland.) Only figures of immense merit — such as kings — were buried with their ships.

Emma: Love's labours crossed

Emma (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG, for brief partial nudity

By Derrick Bang 

Jane Austen, like Dickens and Shakespeare, never gets old.

 

Director Autumn de Wilde’s lavish adaptation of Emma was one of the early COVID casualties, initially scheduled for theatrical release in late February. The loss of that traditional debut is unfortunate, since the sumptuous efforts of cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, production designer Kave Quinn and costume designer Alexandra Byrne screamed for a big-screen showcase.

 

The unworldly Harriet (Mia Goth, left) hangs — like a worshipful puppy — on every
morsel of guidance supplied by Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy). Alas, as we're destined to
learn, Emma isn't worthy of such trust.

The film’s arrival on HBO is nonetheless welcome, and Eleanor Catton’s faithfully droll screenplay works just as well on a home screen. But there’s no question the lavish estate settings would have been even more stunning in a darkened movie theater.

 

We’ve not had a straight American adaptation since the 1996 version with Gwyneth Paltrow in the lead role — and a nod to 1995’s Clueless, as a loose modern translation — so it’s definitely well past time to spend a few hours with Emma Woodhouse and her various friends, family and suitors.

 

Be advised: You may want to take notes, as quite a lot of characters are involved in this light-hearted period dramedy.

 

Anya Taylor-Joy is perfectly cast as the aristocratic Emma, not quite 21 years old, whose self-assurance is matched only by her determination to gift everybody with the benefit of her wisdom. Although culturally polished and well-intentioned, her inherent kindness often is overshadowed by a relentless tendency to meddle.

 

Indeed, her older sister’s brother-in-law, Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn, technically too young for the role), likely would call Emma insufferably arrogant … but he’s too polite and refined to do so. Instead, they bicker and banter in a manner that allows maximum exposure to Austen’s piquant and slightly snarky dialogue. (She was so far ahead of her time.)

 

As the story begins, Emma’s longtime friend and former governess, Miss Taylor (Gemma Whelan), has just “married well,” and become wife to the aristocratic Mr. Weston (Rupert Graves). Having initially introduced them to each other, Emma takes credit for this successful union, and — after returning home, to the family estate at Hartfield — decides that she’s a born matchmaker.

 

Her next “project”: new friend Harriet Smith (Mia Goth), a 17-year-old pupil at a nearby girl’s boarding school. (When she and her fellow students parade about in their scarlet coats — which occurs numerous times, as this film proceeds — one can’t help thinking of Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline, with its “…twelve little girls in two straight lines.”)