Testament of Youth

Dir: James Kent

2014

***

Adapted from the heartbreaking memoir written by Vera Brittain, 2014’s Testament of Youth concentrates on the crux of the novel, omitting much of what really happened. I’m not sure a memoir such as this should be shortened or edited in any way and a Television mini-series would have been far more appropriate. That said, the direction and performances are grand. I thought that the introduction to the memoir was especially well handled, when we see Vera (played by Alicia Vikander) in 1914 arguing with her father (played by Dominic West) after expressing her desire to escape her traditional family in Buxton, by attending Oxford University with her younger brother Edward (Taron Egerton) and his friends Roland Leighton and Victor Richardson (Kit Harington and Colin Morgan). Against her father's opposition, but with the support of her mother (Emily Watson), she passes the entrance examination for Somerville College, Oxford. Before enrolling at Oxford, Vera and Roland, who shares her interest in writing and poetry, begin a romance, although she knows that Victor is in love with her. After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand starts World War I, Vera helps convince her father to let Edward join the army instead of Oxford; Roland and Victor also join, and Roland is the first to reach the Western Front. As long lists of casualties appear in newspapers, Vera leaves Oxford to volunteer for the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse tending the wounded in a hospital in England. His friends still see the war as exciting, but Roland tells Vera of his traumatic experiences from trench warfare at the front. He proposes to Vera; they will marry during his next home leave. Roland returns to France, now with Edward. Roland writes in late 1915 that he has been granted leave, and is safe away from the front. As Vera awaits his arrival during the Christmas holiday, Roland's crying mother tells her on the telephone that he has been killed. The army tells Vera and Roland's family that he died "bravely and painlessly". After she demands the truth, George Catlin, who saw the wounded Roland in Louvencourt, admits that Roland died from his abdomen gunshot wound in agonizing pain. When Victor, blind from his own injuries, arrives at Vera's hospital, she proposes to him out of kindness, sympathy and because it would be something Roland would have liked her to do, but he gently turns her down before suddenly dying from his head injury. In 1917 Vera asks to transfer to France to be closer to Edward, but her first assignment is to treat wounded Germans. She is reluctant, but learns that they suffer and die like English soldiers. Vera finds Edward among the dying, and helps save his life. After recovery she is glad that he is sent to the safer Italian Front. Edward insists that Vera return to Oxford after the war. Vera returns home after her mother has a nervous breakdown. She sees a telegram being delivered and learns, from her father's weeping, that Edward has died. With the death of Geoffrey Thurlow, another friend of Edward's, Vera has now lost in the war the four young men closest to her. In 1918 Vera cannot celebrate as crowds cheer the Armistice with Germany. Back at Oxford, she has nightmares about Roland's and Edward's deaths. Winifred Holtby, another student at the college, helps Vera cope with her trauma. Vera attends a public meeting where speakers debate how to punish Germany for the war. Most of the audience is against George Caitlin (her future husband), who warns that "the philosophy of 'an eye for an eye'" could cause another war. Vera confesses her guilt over persuading her father to let Edward join the army, and tells of how she held the hand of a dying German soldier, who was not different from her brother or her fiancé. She says that their deaths have meaning "only if we stand together now and say 'No'" to war and revenge. Now a pacifist, Vera promises to her dead men that she will not forget them and the film ends with a very poignant dedication to them. The BBC had previously adapted the book as a five-part television serial which was transmitted in 1979 which is perhaps why they decided to make a feature length adaptation instead but in my opinion the film could have done with far more time. The character development is fine but it needed longer, the characters needed more time to really flourish and become established. It felt like a great novel was edited down to soundbites, missing out many other details that would have built the story higher. It does feel like a TV movie but a very cinematic one, in its defense. That said, the film had the support of Shirley Williams, Brittain's daughter, and of Mark Bostridge, Brittain's biographer, editor, and one of her literary executors, who was reportedly acting as consultant on the film, giving it authenticity and a feeling of sincerity. It is a tricky one really, as it feels like the big element missing from this war film is the war, but this is a tale told through the eyes of Vera, who wasn’t in trenches or on the front line. She had also worked as a nurse in Malta though and the ship she was travelling on was almost sunk by a torpedo which could have added a bit of much needed action to the film but I’m guessing the budget nor run time would allow it. I’ve always said though, that a good war film is an anti-war film and that is exactly what it is. The fictional moment that Vera met her future husband George Catlin is a little heavy-handed and a little unfair on Catlin as he did volunteer at the beginning of the war but was rejected. However, he did serve in Belgium as a soldier late in the war. It’s a nice film, hard to pick fault with, it just needed more time devoted to it, given the importance of the novel and the story’s message. I’m an avid movie film above all else but sometimes a story needs to be told properly and a lot of the time that means it should have been on TV rather than on the big screen.