I wasn’t going to review this but The Times review, once again, proved that their reviewers are hacks and unqualified to review a high school musical.
My biggest complaint about this movie, which will not have a wide release or be seen by very many people, is that the preview for it gave away the entire story. Basically it was Schindler’s List with a non-German protagonist. In fact, one of the most interesting things about the story, is that Nicholas Wintin, the person whose life is being depicted, sought no recognition for what he accomplished.
The movie is, oddly, a reminder that everyone — especially England — tried to appease Hitler by not going to war with him and giving in to his demands. Why countries like Austria should be sacrificed and then the southern part of Czechoslovakia which was called the Sudetenland (sorry about the spellings if I’m wrong), is beyond me. But that is what happened. And then in the northern part of the country, the government was replaced with the German/Nazi government, so that Czechoslovakia became the 2nd country swallowed up by Germany, before its invasion of Poland.
In any case, it’s against this time frame and urgency that Nicholas Wintin and others began a kinder transport from Prague to London. At the London end, Wintin and his mother did most of the difficult work: finding people to foster the children, raising 50 pounds for their eventual return (the equivalent of about $4,000 in today’s money), and getting their visas. They managed to save 669 children, most of them Jewish. Another 250 were on the last train but it was prevented from leaving and of those 250, only 2 children survived the camps. Also in the way was Holland, which had banned Jews from entering their country. As they said in the movie, only 200 children survived the camps. He and the others in his group saved 3 times that many.
The Times critic complained about the present-day story, and said it was self-congratulatory which is as wrong headed as can be. Anthony Hopkins makes it very clear that he doesn’t want to think about the Holocaust or the children that he was not able to save. And when forced to, cries only in front of his wife. So it may not be a Times pick while The Tuba Thieves and Knox Goes Away and even Snack Shack are. But at the end of the movie, which was in one of the lower theatres at AMC Lincoln Square — theatres that are reserved for the not well attended — the entire audience burst into applause at the end. And I thought it was well deserved.