The Rote Pleasures of 'One Life' Are Not Enough

For American or international audiences, who perhaps only occasionally peer into the hysteria that is the United Kingdom, there was a year-long obsession in the media with an extremely elderly gentleman called Captain Tom. This military veteran attempted to walk the length of his garden 100 times to raise money for the NHS (Britain’s nationalized and underfunded health service) in the early months of COVID. Soon, the UK media amplified his story as an example of altruistic heroism in the bleak peak of the pandemic.

Captain Tom Moore passed away in 2021, but not before his family had started exploiting the fame, prestige, and money that came with his fundraising. The charitable foundation set up in his name recently announced its closure after an investigation from the Charitable Foundation and a dodgy spa extension proposal. Around the same time, at TIFF 2023, One Life premiered – a film following the humanitarian Nicholas Winton, who rescued hundreds of Jewish children in Czechoslovakia in the year leading up to WW2’s outbreak.

One Life capitalizes on the delirious “Captain Tom fever” that Britain experienced during one of its most shut-in, glued-to-the-media, and optimism-starved months of the 21st century; when viewed outside that bubble, it’s facile and sentimental. Nicholas Winton’s story should resonate during an era where hostility towards refugees is at a record high, but James Hawes’ rendition of Winton’s missions suffers from a surface-level wannabe-prestigious sheen that plays the events insultingly safe and pandering.