Mémoires de jeunesse

23 January 2015 Film of Choice at The Plaza Dorchester Tonight - Testament of Youth. Based on the book by Vera Brittain which is a best selling account of her experiences during the First World War, this film follows the life of Vera herself during those harrowing times. Starting out gently, we follow Vera, her brother and his friends from their comfortable life in the country to the eve of the war in 1914 and beyond. I say gently because this film eases you into what was one of the horrors of recent history, a time which shattered people and ruined lives forever. After fighting so hard to get to Oxford, Vera then gives it all up to become a nurse, a journey which ultimately takes her to France and gives her first hand experience of the massacre that war dishes out. There is a romantic thread running through the film but her strongest bond is with her brother and her world is torn apart when he signs up to fight. Vera was played beautifully by Alicia Vikander, a Swedish actress who I am not familiar with, but she had look of Emily Blunt in her facial expressions and mannerisms, and unfortunately did not seem to age at all during the film, not even in grief. However that is my only criticism in an elegantly shot film even when covering the abomination that is war. Another cinematic experience to make you think.

I first read "Testament of Youth" during university and was captivated by the emotionally moving real-life story of love and loss during war. The memoir spurred me on to read more about Vera Brittain, particularly during the World War I period that is the setting of "Testament of Youth." Having read her diary "Chronicle of Youth" and "Letters from a Lost Generation" long before watching this film, I had formed a strong attachment to Vera Brittain almost as if she was a personal friend. Reading her words, it is very easy for anyone, particularly a young, studious person to relate to her and the blossoming romance she describes between herself and her first love, Roland Leighton.

As such, I had extremely high expectations for this film, and was skeptical that Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington would be "my" Vera and Roland--I had such a fixed idea of them in my head. Fortunately Alicia and Kit's performances met my expectations. They had wonderful chemistry and the relationship as portrayed captured the essence of Vera and Roland: the intelligent, witty banter, sweet/innocent flirtatiousness, passion and angst. This relationship is at the heart of the memoir and is the driving force for much of what occurs during and after its commencement, so it was very important for this relationship to be portrayed accurately and to be emotionally moving for the audience, which it certainly was for me.

Supporting characters played by Taron Egerton (Edward) and Colin Morgan (Victor) were also wonderfully portrayed, which was a relief as the relationships with her brother and friend are extremely important in the memoir as well, and just as emotionally moving as the romance between Vera and Roland. As far as the other aspects of the film are concerned, the stirring scenes at the hospital where Vera volunteers as a nurse are gripping and faithfully portray the tumultuous wartime experiences that Vera describes in her memoir.

The highlight for me was the poetry of Roland which is interwoven during key moments in the film. This is a lovely element to the story that I found very touching and it provides a beautiful, emotional backdrop for key scenes.

I really hope this film spurs those who haven't read the memoir/have never heard of Vera Brittain to go on and read "Testament of Youth." The book certainly lingered in my mind for quite some time after I had first read it, and the film likewise recaptured those feelings for me.

Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) wants to go to Oxford but her parents (Dominic West, Emily Watson) wants her to look for a husband. Her brother Edward (Taron Egerton), and friends Victor Richardson (Colin Morgan) and Roland Leighton (Kit Harington) all adore her. Vera falls for Roland and gets accepted to Somerville College, Oxford. As WWI approaches, her guys all volunteer. She convinces her father to let Edward enlist. She defers college and volunteers to be a nurse.

It has a slow period-piece start. It's got a nice hazy moody feel. Vikander is great but the guys need more exposition. They don't have enough space to show their characters. It's a slow burn and it's all concentrated on Vikander. She wins me over slowly. She has great sadness. It has very poignant moments especially in the later parts.

I remember being given this book as a set text for an English A-Level examination over 30 years ago and am aware that there was a prestigious BBC production of it also several years back but this is the first dramatisation I've seen of Vera Brittain's novel documenting her own experiences in that golden age of post-Edwardian pre WW1 England when for coming-of-age birthdays you got given a piano from your father. That's if you were a girl of course, her more musically gifted brother conversely gets what she would have wanted, a scholarship at Oxford although on the other hand he is also at the the prime age to be called up for what he and most everyone else (but not their knowing father) believes will be a short, heroic and clean war which of course it turned out not to be (apart from the heroic part).

Young Vera is headstrong, not only about wanting to make her own way in a man's world (female emancipation was still years away), but later about making her own contribution to the war effort by enrolling as a nurse while her lover, brother and other male friends are fighting in the trenches. Told wholly from her point of view, it's an entertaining if not enthralling watch, beautifully shot and well acted if somehow just lacking some extra pathos to really capture the hellish undertow of the War to end all Wars.

Alicia Vikander is appealing as the vaguely tomboyish, intellectual Vera. In those days, it would appear, the golden youth had to be chaperoned everywhere by a usually imposing maiden aunt figure and make their feelings about each other known by writing and sending poems as the film strives to contrast the idyllic pre-war days of carefree swimming and carousing with the bleakness and destruction of war itself. For me, I didn't feel the contrast quite sharply enough and my abiding memories of the film are of the big family house and the dreaming spires of Oxford rather than the hell of the makeshift military hospitals and muddy and bloody trenches on the front line.

The best shot for me was when I perhaps detected a tribute to all-time great movie "Gone With The Wind" as Vera goes Scarlett-like amongst the wounded and dying, searching for her wounded brother where the camera ascends into a sweeping dolly shot showing the full extent of the number of the casualties, just like Vincent Fleming's rightly famous take all those years ago.

The supporting actors are picked from the familiar directory of experienced British character actors, notably Miranda Richardson and Emily Watson, while the young actors in the leads, all of them unfamiliar to me, perform with aplomb.

There is a great true-life story to be told here and this film does so respectfully and responsibly, if just a little too carefully at times.

The centenary of the outbreak of what was at the time called The Great War, and came later to be known as The First World War, led to an outpouring of commemorative and cultural events. This explains the timing of "Testament Of Youth" which in fact is based on the famous first instalment of the memoirs of Vera Brittain (1893-1970) which was published as long ago as 1933 and is still in print. It is both a tale of tragic loss as young, idealistic men volunteer for the slaughter fields of France and Belgium and an account of an intelligent young woman's efforts to obtain a university education and make her independent way in the world.

There is a fine ensemble cast of established and new British actors, but the central role is the subject of a surprise and bold piece of casting as the Swedish actress Alicia Vikander plays the quintessentially British Brittain. However, Vikander gives a luminous performance and she is clearly destined for a very successful career. There is a sense of authenticity in having a female scriptwriter Juliette Towhidi to turn Brittain's memoir into a film and the whole thing is beautifully shot with stunning scenery plus period dress and transport.

There is a scene in "Testament Of Youth" which borrows directly from an iconic shot in the classic movie "Gone With The Wind": in both works, an overhead camera pulls back as the central female character walks through a field of dead and dying men revealing ever-larger numbers of bodies.