Testament of Youth

(seen in preview 12 January 2015)

The film, based on Vera Brittain's book of the same name, concerns the author's experiences as a young woman who succeeds, much against family pressure, in gaining a place at Oxford University in 1914, but who during the course of the First World War leaves her studies to become a nurse. It stars Alicia Vikander as Vera Brittain, Kit Harington as her fiance Roland Leighton, Taron Egerton as her brother Edward, and Colin Morgan as Victor Richardson.

The film inevitably telescopes events and creates dramatic situations which may not actually have happened as depicted, but it is nonetheless a powerful portrait of a determined and at times difficult young woman hemmed in by the social mores of her time, trying to cope with the sheer horror and loss which the war inflicted. Alicia Vikander gives an assured performance showing both the steely resilience and the occasional abrasiveness of Vera's character, while the three young men in her life (her brother and his two schoolfriends) are engagingly fresh-faced even as they are engulfed by catastrophe. The three actors are convincingly friendly together and in particular Taron Egerton gives a charming performance of fraternal affection and tact. The supporting cast of parents, mentors and others provide a strong impression of the society which nurtured them.

There are beautifully shot pastoral scenes evoking the famous golden summer of 1914, in sharp contrast to the brief glimpses of the trenches and the far more harrowing scenes of the Etaples field hospital. These latter show the particular hardship of nurses having to care for wounded German soldiers - most affectingly resolved in Vera's case by a poignant scene with a dying soldier, all the more effective for being devoid of subtitles: it is more than clear what is going on. There is a culminating 'crane shot' of the hospital site overwhelmed by new arrivals, somewhat reminiscent of the great railyard scene in 'Gone With the Wind', but a salutary reminder of the awful conditions.

In contrast to these scenes there are many close-ups of the characters, and the camera often lingers on Vera's face to register her reactions and emotions. This is a deliberate device (mentioned by the director in a short 'making of' documentary accompanying the preview) but, as the film is shot in a wide screen format, it is not always ideal to have a face so closely observed. (This is a criticism of the technique, not the performance - Alicia Vikander conveys Vera's emotional development extremely well.) 

The sense of period is reinforced by costume and suitably old public buildings and private dwellings, but occasionally undermined by a too-modern idiomatic dialogue. A well brought-up young lady would surely not have said "It'll be fine" and an Uppingham-educated schoolboy would certainly not have said "Me and Roland will be there".

As Shirley Williams (Vera Brittain's daughter) remarked in the discussion following the screening, the film succeeds in the important task of showing a woman's experience as a central matter of interest, rather than as being merely the adjunct to the story of a man (or men). Always we can see that the testament is being formulated through the eyes of a remarkably perceptive and intelligent woman. hints of the passionate pacifist to come are given towards the end of the film, but that lies beyond the youth so eloquently memorialised here.