TESTAMENT OF YOUTH
Sony Pictures Classics
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: B+
Director: James Kent
Screenwriter: Juliette Towhidi, from Vera Brittain’s memoir
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, Colin Morgan, Emily Watson, Dominic West, Miranda Richardson
Screened at:
Opens: June 5, 2015
A friend tells me that he is going to write his memoir, which makes me wonder: “Are you famous?” I realize, now, that you don’t have to be a celebrity to write a memoir. You need only to be a witness to extraordinary developments and, of course, to be a good writer if you hope to sell the book. Vera Brittain is just such a person: not a celeb by any means, but a crackerjack writer whose 600-word memoir of her experiences during World War One became an immediate best-seller. It did not hurt that Ms. Brittain, who had early on pledged to her family that she would never marry, was headstrong enough to take part in volunteer activities during the war, able to use those experiences for her best-seller. What makes “Testament of Youth” universal despite its Edwardian look is that it deals with a woman whose fiancé is shipped out from England to the front in France, which these days in America could be the unfortunate plight of many a woman whose boyfriends and husbands must face fighting abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The movie adaptation from scripter Juliette Towhidi is directed at a slow pace by James Kent, or, let’s say at the kind of deliberate momentum that pays due respect to the heroic actions of several of its participants. “Testament of Youth” is graced by a special performance from Swedish actress Alicia Vikander as Vera Brittain, a young woman whom you might have seen in the long-playing “Ex Machina” as a robot—though this time she is anything but a woman whose life is directed by father, mother, brother or even chaperone.
Her dad (Dominc West) tries to direct her life when she is 19 by buying a piano for her, hoping that the instrument would dissuade her from going to Oxford University—which he considers a sure way for a gal to end up a spinster. Her mother (Emily Watson) does not have as much a say in Vera’s development, since after all, this is Edwardian England, specifically 1914 to 1918, when young ladies must always be chaperoned to avoid her seeing an unmarried male not part of her family. Men ruled.
“Testament of Youth,” based on Brittain’s 600-page memoir, does not show battle scenes. There are just a few intimations of combat: men dug in at the trenches, men sprawled out in various forms of consciousness whether on the ground in France or in hospitals wherein nurses, highly regimented, take part even in amputations. The film opens on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918 (which we in the States call Veterans Day), the ending of World War I, which finds Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) standing out as a person who is not taking part in vivacious celebrations but thinking instead of whom she had lost in the war. She is determined to be a writer, but here she flashes back graphically to 1914, an independent woman who is to see the years of war from a feminist point of view. She has a close relationship with her brother Edward Brittain (Taron Egerton) and is to develop a romance with Edward’s friend Roland Leighton (Kit Harington). At about the time the two men in her life volunteer for the fighting in France, she is admitted to Oxford University despite being unable at the entrance exam to translate a passage into Latin. She attempts to satisfy the standard by translating into German and is admitted nonetheless because, her favorite teacher, Miss Lorimer (Miranda Richardson), notes that the young woman has an original mind.
With the world at her doorstep, she takes leave of Oxford to go to the front as a military nurse, where—augmented by Rob Hardy’s lensing—she notes with dismay the awful shape of the injured. In one scene which could give the audience grounds to wonder, she treats the German injured as well, using her knowledge of the language to hold their hands and deliver optimistic words.
The film is bolstered by Max Richter’s orchestral score, often soaring, and photographer Rob Hardy’s use of outdoor scenes, where the movie was filmed in London, Oxford and Yorkshire. Most of all, the success of “Testament of Youth” rests on the authentic performance of Alicia Vikander, appearing in virtually every scene, her eyes taking in and interpreting both the horrors of war (she becomes a pacifist) and the glories of romance.
Rated PG-13. 129 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – B+
Acting – A-
Technical – B+
Overall – B+
