By Franz Amussen
LAST YEAR’S centenary of the beginning of World War One brought a flood of books and TV projects re-examining the carnage of those four dreadful years. A late but welcome addition to the canon is Testament of Youth, a new film version of the classic memoir by Vera Brittain, which opened this week in Los Angeles.
Some readers may remember the popular 1979 British TV series of the same name, starring Cheryl Campbell as Brittain, which chronicled the tumultuous life of a forward-thinking young woman immediately before and during the conflict. In this deft retelling we see Brittain moving from being an ambitious and bright young student winning a place at Oxford against the wishes of her parents (Dominic West and Emily Watson, both excellent), before rapidly making a glittering circle of new friends and falling in love with the handsome young Roland (Kit Harrington of Game of Thrones fame). But of course soon her golden Edwardian twilight is soon rent asunder by a certain assassination in the Balkans and shortly thereafter the abattoir that was the Western Front.
This adaptation marks the feature debut of documentary-maker James Kent who introduces Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander), and the young men in her life, during a gorgeous Edwardian summer. She has admirers aplenty among her smart young set but then along comes Roland. Soon swooning, poetry and stolen kisses give way to the more brutal realities of war and her male friends all enlist. Tragedy ensues, of course.
At that point Vera comes into her own, not giving into grief but rather leveraging it into a ferocious response. She quits Oxford and her dreams of a literary life to nurse victims of battle, first at home and then at the front. In the course of the story she loses almost everyone she loves to the conflict but discoveres herself, becoming not just a proto-feminist but a leading voice for a lost generation.
Vikander’s provides a compelling portrayal and proves her early performances in both A Royal Affair and as Kitty in Anna Karenina were no fluke. She projects both beauty and an emotional intelligence that draw us in, charming us with her spirit even as her life gets progressively darker.
Although the usual costume drama tropes are here – lovers at the railway station, the outsider among the Dreaming Spires, a war to end before Christmas, the corrupted wedding day, – Kent never surrenders to cliché, and the result is an absorbing and sobering look at a cataclysmic time, after which life was never quite the same.
Testament of Youth. Directed by James Kent. PG-13. 129 Mins. Now playing at the ArcLight Hollywood.
