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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. Entering theaters this Friday, the film One Life tells the story of Sir Nicholas Winton. He was a British stockbroker turned humanitarian, who during the second World War transported 669 Jewish children out of Prague and into Britain. His work was relatively unknown until 50 years later when the BBC magazine show That's Life reunited him with many of the children he'd helped save. One Life depicts Winton at these two stages of his life. The latter elder version of Winton in 1988 is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, the younger Winton of 1938, as he mobilizes funds and volunteers to rescue children, is played by my next guest, actor and musician, Johnny Flynn. Here's a clip featuring Flynn as Winton and Helena Bonham Carter as his mother, Babi Winton.

Babi Winton: "So, you're going?"

Nicholas Winton: "I am. Yes."

Babi Winton: "Everyone in Prague is trying to get out. My son is trying to get in. Did you speak to Martin?"

Nicholas Winton: "I did. Turns out he's not going to be there. He's escorting some refugees out of the country, and then he is heading back home to London."

Babi Winton: "Nicky,--"

Nicholas Winton: "Look, I have to do something. I mean, you of all people should understand that. Isn't that what you taught me? Well, I can't just sit here reading about it. These people need help."

Babi Winton: "I was never in doubt that the cause was just. Only where the Prague is safe."

Nicholas Winton: "It's only a week, huh? I'll be back before you even miss me."

Babi Winton: "Nicky, it's not a joke.

Nicholas Winton: "I know. I know. I'm sorry. But I have to go."

Kousha Navidar: One Life was directed by my other guest, James Hawes and is in theaters nationwide this Friday. Hi, James. Johnny, welcome to All Of It.

Johnny Flynn: Hi.

James Hawes: Nice to meet you.

Johnny Flynn: Thanks for having us.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Johnny, let's start with you. Was Nicholas Winton a figure you were familiar with before joining this film?

Johnny Flynn: There's a clip of the moment that he was on the TV show you mentioned, That's Life, which was a viral sensation at various points in the early ages of social media. I'd seen that but shamefully didn't know much else about him. When James introduced me to the film and we started talking about it, I was able to read-- There's several great books. One in particular written by his daughter, Barbara, a biography of him.

You get a measure of his whole life in that book. This moment in history where he helped these children in Prague as part of this amazing, brave team of people was for him, one tiny episode in a long life of charitable work and philanthropic stuff that he did. He'd almost forgotten it. He was a quietly, gigantic soul, hugely humble person who lived every moment with a view to trying to help people. It was an honor to tell his story.

Kousha Navidar: That phrase you just used, 'the quietly gigantic soul', is very resonant. That's a beautiful way of saying it. James, Johnny and Anthony Hopkins had both signed onto the film when it was announced that you were directing. How did you get attached to the project?

James Hawes: I grew up doing a lot of TV movies based on real events and following the lives of real characters. I've been connected with See-Saw Films who've just made Slow Horses, that show that's been out on Apple. It seemed like a moment they felt, and they sent me the script and in fact, a link to the clip that Johnny's talking about, which for a director is a promise and a curse, because you know certainly in that moment how your film can end both emotionally and and dramatically. Also, it means that people are expecting a certain level of emotional delivery because you've got to be at least as good as that clip. It was too good an invitation to turn down.

Kousha Navidar: Tall order, right? Match that organic moment in real life and then have it through. Yes. This is an international story. It's also a European story and particularly a British story. The film came out in theaters in the UK last year. Now, it's coming to the US. This is for both of you. James, maybe we can start with you. What's been different about the press cycles in each country?

James Hawes: I don't fully know until we finished the US press cycle. I think, obviously, there is that knowledge here of what's coming. Interestingly, it's been released in France two weeks ago. It's also playing incredibly powerfully in France. I think, although in many ways it is the British story and a Czech story, it's also a tremendously human story. Many of those children who were saved have then gone on to live in Canada and US, Italy, Israel. I like to think of it as an international story rather than a particular national event.

Kousha Navidar: Johnny, how does that make you feel when you hear that?

Johnny Flynn: There's a very poignant scene in the middle of the episodes that I got to portray as the younger Nicholas Winton when he meets a rabbi, who is the gatekeeper to the list of children in the Jewish refugee camps around Prague. He's saying, "Why are you drawn to do this? What's your motivation?" He says, "I see myself as a European, as a socialist." He comes from Jewish heritage, but he sees himself as a human being, and so that universality that James is talking about, that's what I love about the story. Since we knew about the film, several catastrophic conflicts have broken out.

We're living in an age where yet more innocent victims, lots of children in particular, are caught in the cross hairs of the human conflict. It's so important to remember them and to tell the story of what, for those people, Nicholas and Doreen and Trevor, was a kind of ordinary effort, but for us, looking at them now, we realize it's a heroic and heroically brave effort to do the right thing. In every moment, we have the choice to do the right thing. These were people who were like that. There are many thousands of people living as a result of their efforts. Yes, it's a powerful story to tell now more than ever.

Kousha Navidar: It's so interesting that you bring that up because that was a part of the movie that was especially resonant, talking about what ordinary individuals can do. There are a lot of inspirational moments in this movie. Let's listen to one of those clips.

Cast 1: "We are moving the children."

Nicholas Winton: "In big groups, by train."

Cast 1: "That's a two-day trip, which would mean crossing Holland and the Dutch have shut their borders to Jewish refugees and they'd have to cross Germany."

Nicholas Winton: "Yes. But they'd only be passing through and on British visas."

Cast 2: "With British foster parents waiting."

Cast 1: "Well, that is, if you can find British foster parents. There are a thousand children on that list. The welcome may not be as warm as you are imagining."

Nicholas Winton: "Then we have to heat things up. We have to get the press working, get them moving, and on our side. Ordinary people wouldn't stand for this if they knew what was actually happening."

Cast 1: "You have a lot of faith in ordinary people."

Nicholas Winton: "I do. Because I'm an ordinary person."

Cast 2: "So am I."

Cast 1: "And me."

Nicholas Winton: "Well, there you go."

Kousha Navidar: The reality of war and suffering, like what these children experience is often too much for people to process if they themselves haven't been in it. Johnny, did immersing yourself in this story, did it challenge or reaffirm anything you believed about what ordinary people can do in times of crisis?

Johnny Flynn: Yes. It was. It was quite an extraordinary thing to be in some of the real places where these events happened, on the train station in Prague, and to be recreating these scenes in hotel rooms. Like you're saying, I think the extraordinary thing, one of the amazing elements of what they did was that they made offices in their hotel rooms and they invited people to come and bring the documents that they needed to put things together. The makeshift nature of it, which is also true of what people have to deal with in refugee camps.

Nicky visits the camp and Doreen showing him around, and he says, "Where are the doctors?" She says, "There were plenty of doctors already here." They're educated people, skilled people, forced into terrible situations, and how humanity deals with the pressure of something like this conflict and the invasion that the Nazis were making. Somebody like Nicholas with the practical, pragmatic mind that he had, was able to cut through the things that would leave other people feeling overwhelmed. He just took it step by step, and that was his great skill. What he saw as a very ordinary skill, but actually, it was like a superhero quality, and achieved so much just through his pragmatism and his stoicism that he obviously got from his mother as well.

It's great you played that bit of Helena. She's so wonderful in the film. You see her dealing with the Home Office in Britain, and I love all of that. Yes. Just ordinary humanity achieving so much.

Kousha Navidar: That stoicism that you mentioned is something that cuts across generations. This movie looks at two different time periods. James, I want to listen to another clip from the film. This features Anthony Hopkins speaking with Jonathan Price, who plays the elder version of Martin Blake, a friend who encouraged Winton to travel to Prague and get involved in the humanitarian work. Here, they're reuniting over lunch, and Hopkins speaks first. Let's listen to it.

Anthony Hopkins: Do you ever think about the children and what happened to them?

Jonathan Price: Yes. I do, from time to time. Do you?

Anthony Hopkins: No. Not really. Maybe a little recently.

Jonathan Price: It is incredible what you achieved.

Anthony Hopkins: Oh, I don't think of it that way.

Jonathan Price: No, no, no, no. I mean it truly. You should be proud.

Anthony Hopkins: Oh.

Jonathan Price: Save one life, save the world, you know?

Anthony Hopkins: it's nothing to brag about. Look at Doreen and Trevor. They did far more than I did, and they took all the risks. I'm there. You stayed in Prague.

Jonathan Price: Nicky, telling people isn't bragging.

Anthony Hopkins: No.

Kousha Navidar: James, how do you think about this character at these two stages of his life, and what each depiction required from the two actors?

James Hawes: Look, first of all, I was blessed with these two actors. Tony, as he likes to be called, and Johnny who's with us now. We needed a difference, and obviously, there's the older man who's to some extent trapped in his grief and his regret of what he's failed to do. We treated that as a very different world where the camera barely moves and the man is obviously in a different state of emotion. Then the much more energetic man on a mission, the younger Nicky, in Prague, who we give life to the camera. Everything is on the clock, and more desperate.

If the worlds were different, the man needed to be the same. To some extent, this is a question for Johnny, but both actors did their research from the same notes, from the same biography, from the same man. Then Johnny came to visit the set when Tony was at work shooting his scenes, first of all. Both of them compared notes, plans, and there are little gestures that you'll find that Johnny brings to the performance. Nervous twitches with his glasses or moments of intonation. It's probably easier for me to talk about this than you, Johnny, because you'll feel self-conscious about it, but it is quite brilliant.

It's also a real testament to the generosity of Johnny as an actor, that he doesn't try and force his version of Nicky on the character, and he lets the two speak. Here's something, the script was written much more to be linear. Do the 1930s, do the 1980s. Because they're so brilliant together, we actually crossed time periods much more.

Kousha Navidar: That's high praise. I want to get more into it right after a quick break. I'm with James Hawes, director, and Johnny Flynn, actor of young Nicholas Winton, One Life in theaters nationwide, this Friday, March 15th. We'll be right back.

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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. We are talking about One Life. It's a movie in theaters nationwide this Friday, March 15th. We're with James Hawes, the director, and Johnny Flynn, the actor of young Nicholas Winton. Before the break, we were talking about the depiction of Nicholas Winton at these two different phases of his life. Johnny, something that stood out in the movie was that a lot of the scenes of Nicholas's past show him navigating these different obstacles to move his goal forward. We see him employ many different leadership tactics to trust, to persuade, to advocate. Were there elements of the real life Nicholas Winton's leadership style that you wanted to prioritize in your depiction of the character?

Johnny Flynn: In lots of ways, he was an incredibly belligerent person, and I think he was somebody who set his mind to a goal and unwaveringly carried on towards the target, but was able to adapt, and if something failed, he didn't get knocked back. He was emotionally fairly unflappable. He'd try anything to get to where he needed to go. He was very bullish in that way, but not through being a loud or an arrogant person. The way when he meets Doreen, I love those scenes when he arrives in the office. He's not getting emotional or shouty at all.

She doesn't expect him to be able to make any impact on the situation. He's only there for a few weeks, and he very quietly says, "Well, we need to do this, and we need to do this, and we need to do this." That was him. That was what I understood from reading the books about him, and just absolutely did not give up on the goal. He had a hugely practical mind. His leadership skills were in terms of practicality and galvanizing people to work with him in the way that he saw things needing to be done. He wasn't a hugely charismatic leader in that respect, and his humility dictated that he just got on and did what he needed to do.

He asked people to help. It was irresistible in a way. I think a huge part of it, the operation was his mom back home in England. The fact that they were doing this from hotel rooms in Prague, but then back home in their front room in Hampstead, and getting their friends, their neighbors to come in and put together these applications for the Home Office. It was a real human operation.

Kousha Navidar: That term 'human operation', the team effort, I think is crucial because there's been a lot of attention paid throughout history to Winton's contribution since the 1980s, but like you said, Johnny, he was really part of a broader child refugee effort that included volunteers from around the world. James, I'm wondering, how did you want to treat Winton as the central figure of the story while still respecting the level of contributions of so many others that he worked with?

James Hawes: It was critical, and it was also truly important both to Nicky Winton and to the family. As you say, he used to joke about it himself and say he reckoned the only reason he got recognized was because he lived the longest. He lived to 106, so he would've taken some beating. We wanted both to keep it honest to the facts and also to be respectful of very important contributions, including from the Czech volunteers. This wasn't just about the Brits coming in and saving the day. We characterize that with a character called Hana, who was representative really of some of the Czech individuals who were at far more risk from arrest by the Gestapo and detention and worse. Yes, it was important, and I hope we reflected that in this version of the story.

Kousha Navidar: In the last year or so, we've had three major cinematic depictions of the Holocaust. There's Zone of Interest, Steve McQueen's Occupied City, and this film. They're all quite different. Zone of Interest takes a radical approach to show the banality of evil and violence. Occupied City is a documentary within the structure of an atlas showing locations in Amsterdam during Nazi occupation and now. One Life takes a more traditional dramatic narrative and maybe a more hopeful approach. In about the minute that we have left, I'd love to hear from both of you, why do you think a story like this one specifically focusing on the heroes is important to tell? Johnny, let's start with you.

Johnny Flynn: I suppose because these are people that we can see ourselves in nowadays. There was a big appeal when the conflict in Ukraine began for people to open up their homes for people fleeing Ukraine. It was really touching and overwhelming to see lots of friends. We put our names on a list, too. We've got a spare room. You realize through seeing that happen in real time, you realize that there are these people amongst us, even though you read the news and everything looks so awful. To reflect on these people doing this thing in 1939 fills you with hope and a sense of power as to what the ordinary people do make a difference, and that's what we need.

Kousha Navidar: James, in 20 seconds, does that resonate with you? Any other elements you'd want to point out?

James Hawes: Of course, it does. I think those are three very different films that took very different angles. We wanted an accessible, emotional film that ended on an upbeat, of a triumph of human spirit. Something to take you out of, yes, a Holocaust movie, but one about human history that's even bigger than that one event.

Kousha Navidar: The movie is One Life. It's in theaters nationwide, this Friday, March 15th. We're speaking with James Hawes, the director, and Johnny Flynn, the actor. Thank you both so much.

Johnny Flynn: Thank you.

James Hawes: Thank you.