a film review
© 2015 Jeanne Powell
BBC Films and Heyday Films have brought to the big screen "Testament of Youth," the haunting and powerful memoir of Vera Brittain's experience during the Great War (1914-1918). The film has received nominations from British Independent Films, the London Critics Circle, and the London Film Festival. I recommend it highly.
The Great War is lost in the mists of time for most Americans. Those who have read about it know that it was renamed World War I after a second world-wide war was fought. In addition to the slaughter of huge numbers of young men and the fall of four empires, the First World War was notable for the number of women nurses on the front lines who came home suffering from traumatic memories, for which there was no name at the time. Vera was one of those nurses. After the war she begins the process of healing and goes on to become an author, political activist, feminist, wife and mother of two.
Screenwriter Juliette Towhidi and director James Kent followed Vera Brittain's 600 page memoir, although they used other sources as well: the classic 1979 BBC series "Testament of Youth;" Vera's diaries; her correspondence published in "Letters From A Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends" edited by Mark Bostridge and Paul Berry; the Bostridge-Berry biography of Vera; and a collection of Vera's poetry and prose - "Because You Died" - edited by Bostridge. Vera's daughter, former MP (and now baroness) Shirley Williams, also supported the production team with script drafting discussions and insights into her famous mother.
Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) is in her first year at Oxford University, where her brother Edward (Taron Egerton) is a student. Their mutual friend Roland Leighton (Kit Harington) also studies at Oxford. Vera and Roland share a love of poetry as well as the joys and fears of first love. Film director James Kent sought to capture "the idyll of Vera's pre-war life with lyrical grace," and he does so in scenes of summer swimming at the family's private beach, sibling banter in the Brittain household, chaperoned visits to museums as Vera and Roland grow closer, excited faces aglow with pride as the boys receive their commissions. Life is good, and as everyone knows, "the war will be over in a few weeks."
The parents of Vera and Edward are well played by Dominic West and Emily Watson. Miranda Richardson as her intimidating Oxford tutor, Miss Lorimer, is underused in this brief version of their interactions. With Vera so determined to sit for Oxford exams, her father finally gives permission. Not remembering her Latin, Vera writes in German instead, and creates enough of an impression to be admitted. Vikander plays Vera with an "exceptional life-force, drive, passion and fierce intelligence," everything the director could have wanted.
Everyone in Vera's world has enlisted to fight in the Great War. She feels guilty about remaining at Oxford. Then English newspapers begin listing the names of those known dead and those missing in action. Government telegrams arrive by bicycle messenger. Vera steps away from Oxford and enlists in the auxiliary nursing corps. The training is difficult, under the critical eye of Chief Nurse Hope Milroy (Halley Atwell). At her first assignment, Vera is stunned to discover she is taking care of German prisoners of war, in keeping with the Geneva Conventions of 1864 and 1906, which provided for the "impartial reception and treatment of all combatants."
From carefree university student and budding poet, Vera transforms into a nurse capable of working near front lines under enemy fire and sponge-washing the dirt-caked bodies of unconscious soldiers. There are burns, infections, amputations (when no doctor is present), rain, mud, corpses to be moved outside of the treatment tents; and there is a hidden fear each time a new stretcher is brought in. One day that fear is realized - she administers emergency medical treatment to her brother Edward.
A thread woven throughout the story is Vera's correspondence with her love, Roland. Back from the front on first home leave, their moments together are electric. She does not recognize the stranger he has become. As she probes with questions, he pushes her away roughly. Recognizing the source of his anger, she overcomes her fear, and seeks to bring him to an awareness of where he is.
One by one they are taken from her - Roland Leighton, Victor Richardson, Geoffrey Thurlow and her brother Edward. The experience of losing friends, brother and future husband, while providing medical assistance to other soldiers with life-threatening wounds, takes its toll. Vera becomes focused, closed in, indifferent to all outside this new world. Armistice Day in 1918, with joyous crowds filling the streets, finds her distanced emotionally as she remembers her losses.
Roland's family notifies her that his kit has been sent home - the leather packet containing his possessions in the trenches. She searches through it wordlessly, while his family watches in puzzlement, and finally finds what she has been seeking — an envelope marked "for Vera."
Roland's poems are included in Vera's memoir and in this poignant film, "Testament of Youth." Vera Brittain's activism after the Great War left a strong and positive mark on her war-shocked generation, and speaks to today's youth as well. Go see the film.
##
