One life's relevance to today

One Life is a historic story retold for today audience, highlighting the response of individuals, families and leaders. Krish Kandiah ponders what it can teach us about sanctuary.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

An old man wearing a suit and tie sits in a TV audience as people stand around him.

Anthony Hopkins plays Nicholas Winton.

BBC Film.

There’s an elderly man with thick-rimmed glasses sitting in the studio audience of a popular 1980s television programme. The camera lingers on him as the presenter on the stage, in her signature blue dress, opens up a scrapbook detailing a hitherto unknown mission at the beginning of the second world war that rescued 639 Jewish children from the Nazi genocide.

The man in the audience was the force behind this rescue mission, and the camera is focussed on him because there’s about to be one of the best television moments in history. Unbeknown to him, he is sitting next to a lady whose life he once saved. As Esther Rantzen reveals the connection, a look of shock, wonder and amazement crosses his face.

The story that was kept secret for nearly a lifetime was broken in front of a live television audience of millions. I’ve watched the recording a hundred times; it never fails to make me tear up. I’ve spoken to people who were on the production team of that show who say that this programme was the highlight of their careers. It was a truly brilliant piece of television.

40 years later and I am sat in the Royal Festival Hall next to another elderly gentleman. We have just watched Anthony Hopkin’s incredible performance as Nicholas Winton, that man in the studio, in the new movie One Life. The director of the movie, James Hawes, makes his way to the front and asks if there is anyone in the audience who is alive today because of Nicholas Winton. The elderly gentleman beside me stands along with hundreds of others. Some of those standing were on the Kindertransport in 1939. Others were their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

It was an immense privilege to spend some time with these survivors. Many had their original identity photographs with them. It was an emotional evening as I heard stories from those who remembered boarding the trains in Czechoslovakia in 1939 and saying goodbye to their parents for the last time.

Many of the Kindertransport descendants had met Nicholas Winton personally before he died and were astounded by Hopkin’s ability to capture his likeness and his story.

I never met him myself, but as I watched One Life, I felt like I was in the room with him. The audience meets him as a young man discovering the terrible situation for Jews in Europe and deciding to take action. We journey through the many obstacles to the rescue mission. At first nobody would take in the Jewish children because of the misconception that migrants would overwhelm local services at a difficult time for the country. Yet through savvy use of media, great administration and pure unrelenting persistence, Winton and his mother (Helena Bonham Carter) were able to get a system running that meant hundreds of temporary foster parents not only came forward but paid for the privilege of helping to save the lives of these children.

As many of the children lost their families to the horrors of the gas chambers and could not be reunited with their families, a large number were adopted by their foster carers and grew up in the UK. Some went on to greatness, others lived quiet lives of service. The 91-year-old man who sat next to me at the premiere had dedicated his life to the church and also to making sure the next generation didn’t forget either the horrors of the holocaust, or the hospitality of ordinary people.

One Life is a deeply inspirational film. As I reflected afterwards, I couldn’t help but draw parallels with the situation in the world I live in now with terrible wars that are in full swing. I wondered what Nicholas Winton would do for the children being slaughtered today. What would a modern equivalent of the Kindertransport look like? Who could step forward to inspire our nation once again to offer sanctuary, protection and hope to our world’s most vulnerable children?

https://youtu.be/8u1UAc7GKek

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Kirsh Kandiah reports from the One Life premiere.

Article

Culture

Film & TV

Monsters

11 October 2024

5 min read

Cartoon villains: who's the real baddie?

What kind of villain do we want?

James Cary

James Cary is a writer of situation comedy for BBC TV (Miranda, Bluestone 42) and Radio (Think the Unthinkable, Hut 33).

A cartoon chase sees a car driven by a cow escaping from a car of baddies under a giant poster of their villainous boss.

Jazz Cow vs. Dr Popp.

“Nobody thinks they’re the bad guy”. That’s a phrase I often use when helping people write situation comedies. It’s always useful to have a strong antagonist who gets in the way of our hero. But the villains tend not to consider themselves to be evil. In fact, they are offended at the suggestion.

The Batman universe has turned the interesting villain to new levels. The Penguin is Gotham’s latest production, a brand-new TV series on HBO. Colin Farrell plays a highly nuanced anti-hero, exploring The Penguin’s “awkwardness, and his strength, and his villainy, yes, his propensity for violence”. Farrell told Comicbook.com he was attracted to the role because “there's also a heartbroken man inside there you know, which just makes it really tasty.” Audiences are often invited to have sympathy for the devil. Should we be worried about the blurring of the lines between good and evil?

I’ve been asking myself this question as I’ve been writing a new animation which involves a villain called Dr Popp who is trying to take over a city. But what kind of villain do we want in 2024?

Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of The Joker back in 1989 feels like pop-culture ancient history. His Joker was an embittered agent of chaos without many redeeming qualities but mercifully lacked the nihilism of later versions. It was an old-fashioned story of cops and robbers which has its own simplistic charm. But have those days gone forever, having been shot in the head and dropped off a bridge into a river?

The problem is it is so easy to humanise evil. You just give it a human face. The arch-villains of the twentieth century – the Nazi members of the SS – are rather sweet when portrayed by comedians Mitchell and Webb. A nervous member of the SS Unit (Mitchell) waiting for an attack from the Russians looks at the skull on his cap and asks his fellow comrade-in-arms (Webb): “Hans, are we the baddies?”

Any student of World War Two will know that it’s never as simple as good versus evil. Many terrible things were done by people who felt justified in their behaviour. Moreover, ‘the goodies’ also felt compelled to do morally dubious things – like the bombing of civilians in cities – in order to defeat ‘the baddies. After all, they started it.’ The truth is always far more complicated than the war films suggest.

Dr Popp is the very worst kind of villain: he has great power and he wants to help. In his own mind, he’s completely clear about his mission.

Ten years ago, I was researching real life baddies for my sitcom Bluestone 42 about a bomb disposal team set in Afghanistan. At times, I had to think like the Taliban who, in their own minds, were entirely justified in leaving bombs by the side of the road, to be triggered by British soldiers or Afghan children. They were pretty relaxed about the outcome. It’s hard to sympathise with this way of thinking, but it made sense to them.

My internet search history from that time probably put me on some sort of Home Office watchlist. Maybe a small dossier was started on me. More recently, that dossier would have become thicker as I’ve moved sideways from sitcom into murder mysteries, having recently worked on Death in Paradise and Shakespeare and Hathaway. To work on shows like these, you need to be thinking of good reasons for good people to commit murder. Someone would need a very strong motive to commit a murder on an idyllic Caribbean island where the local detective has a 100 per cent resolution rate. You also need to research ingenuous methods for murdering people in a way that escapes detection. I’m surprised I’ve not yet had a knock on my door, or enquiries made to the neighbours to call a number if they see anything suspicious.

But what about cartoon villains where nothing is real? The bold colours and the larger-than-life characters might suggest that there is more clarity about goodies and baddies. But there isn’t. Evil villains – that is, villains who realise they are evil – are extremely rare. Skeletor from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe comes to mind. This kind of demonic baddie can be entertaining with wit and charm, like Hades in the Disney movie, Hercules. This character had some brilliant one-liners and was superbly brought to life by the voice of James Woods. Overall, however, purely evil characters are hard to write.

Cartoon villains need proper motivation. This is either a character flaw or a backstory. In The Lion King, Scar is consumed with envy that his brother is king – and a good one at that. In The Incredibles, Syndrome is playing out his sense of injustice that he was not allowed to be Mr Incredible’s sidekick, Incrediboy. In The Simpsons, Mr Burns is essentially Mr Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. He’s a Scrooge-type figure who doesn’t care about love and respect. He just wants to own the town.

The cartoon villain I’ve been thinking about is for a new animation project I’ve been working on called Jazz Cow. The eponymous hero is a saxophone-playing cow and a reluctant Bogart-style leader of a bohemian band of misfits. They are trying resist the advance of the all-consuming algorithm created by Dr Popp, the villain. But what’s his motivation?

Dr Popp is the very worst kind of villain: he has great power and he wants to help. In his own mind, he’s completely clear about his mission. He’s trying to make the world better, easier, safer, cheaper, more efficient and convenient. Why would anyone want to refuse his technology, reject his software and keep away from his algorithm?

This is why Dr Popp has to silence Jazz Cow, literally, by stealing his saxophone. He simply cannot allow Jazz Cow to delight audiences at Connie Snott’s with live improvised music. There’s no need for this music! Dr Popp has all the music you could possibly need, want or imagine. Why improvise when we have artificial intelligence?

Dr Popp is a cartoon villain for today when relativism is still alive and well. ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ are still concepts or points of view rather than absolutes. However, there is good and evil in Jazz Cow. But the evil doesn’t come from Doctor Popp. It comes from the user or consumer. That would be us.

‘The Algorithm’ is always learning and always trying to give us our hearts’ desire. And that’s the problem: our hearts frequently desire that which they cannot – and should not – have. Dr Popp’s algorithm is like a mirror held up to our faces. In it, we see the real baddie: ourselves. Not even Jazz Cow can save us from that. But what this horn-playing cow can do is to make the world a more humane place.

For more information about Jazz Cow, and information on how you can make the show happen, take a look at our Kickstarter – and don’t worry. Jazz Cow would approve, as it’s the creative’s way of sticking IT to the man.