A memoir representing a generation, containing great love and incredible loss. Director: James Kent. Starring: Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, Colin Morgan
Testament Of Youth film 2015 is the first major film adaptation of the memoir of Vera Brittain - a young woman who abandons her dreams of being a writer with the privilege of studying at Somerville College, Oxford, in order to be a nurse at war so as to be closer to her loved ones who have signed up to fight in the First World War.
Alicia Vikander presents Brittain as hypersensitive, yet also an independent, strong willed and courageous voice of the war generation, leaving the audience filled with an overwhelming sense of pathos and sympathy.
The pre-war section of the film is relatively light compared to the power of what's to come, with the main focus being on Brittain's dreams of writing and studying at Oxford to the anxious protests of her father (Dominic West). The male characters representing the war generation are also introduced, Vera's brother Edward (Egerton) and his friends Victor (Morgan) and Rowland (Harington) - both of whom taking a liking to Vera. Our sympathies go out to Victor, the sweet, quiet young man whose shyness prevents him expressing his feelings until it's too late. Rowland and Vera, on the other hand, quickly develop a strong relationship, doing their best to see each other as much as possible whilst intensely trying to evade the watchful eye of Vera's chaperone.
Vera's dreams of studying at Oxford with Rowland are crushed when he signs up at the first signs of the war, along with her brother, Edward. Being left behind causes Vera's priorities to be set straight; she must do something in the war to feel closer to her loved ones. So she abandons her studies at Oxford, much to the dismay of her tutor (Miranda Richardson), and joins in with the war nursing.
The brutality of war is presented in different ways throughout the film. On Rowland's first leave home, he is not himself. He puts up a front for his friends - laughing and joking around, but he can barely look at Vera. The graphic portrayal of the physical brutality in the hospitals and medical huts in France are extremely impactful, forcing you to look away, after being horrified by the powerful depiction of the war's distressing effects.
Death is inevitable in any war memoir, and so the quiet dread of when and where it will occur is constant in the audience's mind. We know it’s not going to be a happy ending. We know tissues will be necessary.
The overall purpose of the memoir was to give the voice of a generation, and this is done explicitly well. The concentration on Vera's perception of the loss helps the audience to understand how effecting the war really was, although it is something I'm sure we'll never be able to fully apprehend.