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Anchored by an extraordinary performance from actress Alicia Vikander, James Kent ’s “Testament of Youth” bears comparison to many other superbly mounted costume dramas backed by the BBC, but this one has a special distinction: it chronicles the horrors that World War I inflicted on a generation of young English people from a woman’s perspective.

Though the war was followed by a slew of books about it, Vera Brittain’s account of her own experiences has been regarded as unique. It did not appear in the war’s immediate aftermath, partly because the aspiring writer didn’t know how to deal with her memories. She first tried writing a novel, which she shelved as a failure, a judgment she also made against a subsequent attempt to make a book by fictionalizing journals and letters. It was only later, inspired by filmmaker John Grierson’s coining of the term “documentary,” that she decided to craft a nonfiction account of her experiences, which became an instant bestseller upon its publication in 1933. (The book was previously filmed as a BBC television series in 1979; it was followed by two sequels, “Testament of Friendship” and “Testament of Experience,” which have not been filmed.)

In some ways, making a TV series out of Brittain’s 661-page memoir, which covers her life from childhood to 1925, has an obvious logic. In turning the material into a two-hour movie, screenwriter Juliette Towhidi understandably elected to sacrifice some of the book’s expansiveness by focusing on events leading up to the war and the war itself, giving only a glimpse of Brittain’s activities as an ardent pacifist afterwards.

Following a brief prologue that shows Vera (Vikander) stunned at the news of the armistice in 1918, the story flashes back to the halcyon, unsuspecting days prior to war’s outbreak more than four years earlier. Here, Vera’s enjoying an impromptu rural swim with her beloved brother Edward ( Taron Egerton ) and their friend Victor ( Colin Morgan ).

Though these three are all high-spirited people enjoying the pleasures of youth, Vera’s life is anything but becalmed. Her desire to attend university to gain an education that will allow her to pursue a career as a professional writer is staunchly opposed by her father ( Dominic West ) and mother ( Emily Watson ), who believe that women have no reason to seek advanced schooling much less work outside the home. Vera is fiercely determined, though, and receives some crucial support from Edward.

Her brother also affects her fate in introducing her to a schoolmate of his, Roland Leighton (Kit Harrington). Though Vera had decided not to let romantic attachments arise lest they interfere with her career goals, she feels an immediate chemistry with the dreamily handsome Roland, who writes poetry and admires her independence.

When she achieves her goal of admission to Oxford and goes up to begin her studies, it’s like a dream has come true, but the nightmare of war intervenes with cruel alacrity. Amidst all the patriotic fervor and the belief that the conflict will be glorious and short-lived, most young men haven’t the slightest hesitation about enlisting, and the recruits soon include Edward, Victor and Roland. The latter’s departure is particularly wrenching for Vera as the two have fallen in love and will become engaged.

Though her battle to enter university was hard-won, Vera also feels the call of duty and gives up her studies to become a nurse. She is first stationed in London, where she has to overcome the suspicions of some against her privileged background. Then she goes off to the battlefront in France, where such petty concerns are instantly forgotten amid the chaos and challenges of tending to a constant influx of the horribly maimed and dying.

From “The Big Parade” to “ Paths of Glory ,” movies about World War I have focused on the particularly hellish conditions faced by men engaged in industrial-scale trench warfare. Seeing the consequences of that destruction from a nurse’s point of view is no less sobering. Vera must deal with the screams and pleas of men who have suffered the most gruesome injuries, and hurried amputations are the rule. (The film used veterans of the Afghanistan war, supplied by an agency called Amputees in Action.)

Reflecting the widespread devastation that the war visited on a generation of Europeans, all of Vera’s closest male contemporaries and intimates suffer the terrible depredations of combat and illness. Yet she is just as moved by her ministrations to a dying German soldier, whose final agonies, she wrote later, were a crucial factor in leading her to be an antiwar activist for the rest of her life.

An intimate epic, “Testament of Youth” has great historical sweep yet remains focused on the human vicissitudes experienced by Vera and her circle. Making his feature debut after work in television and documentaries, director James Kent proves exceptionally skilled in supplying the film with a hauntingly poetic visual sense and eliciting fine, exacting performances from his able cast.

While all of the actors’ work deserves commendation, special praise must be given to Alicia Vikander , a Swedish actress who does an amazing job conveying one young Englishwoman’s strength, resilience, intelligence and vulnerability. Considering the horrors and tragedies the war rained on Vera Brittain, it’s perhaps surprising she survived with her mind intact. Yet Vikanker’s performance clearly suggests the inner resources and tremendous determination that allowed her not only to pull through, but also to write an enduring testament to those who suffered and died.

Godfrey Cheshire

Godfrey Cheshire is a film critic, journalist and filmmaker based in New York City. He has written for The New York Times, Variety, Film Comment, The Village Voice, Interview, Cineaste and other publications.

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Film credits.

Testament of Youth (2015)

Rated PG-13 for thematic material including bloody and disturbing war related images

129 minutes

Alicia Vikander as Vera Brittain

Kit Harington as Roland Leighton

Hayley Atwell as Hope

Dominic West as Mr. Brittain

Emily Watson as Mrs. Brittain

Colin Morgan as Victor Richardson

Anna Chancellor as Mrs. Leighton

Miranda Richardson as Miss Lorimer

Taron Egerton as Edward Brittain

• Juliette Towhidi

Cinematography

• Rosie Alison

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Review: ‘Testament of Youth’ Recalls the Great War With Little Nostalgia

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Movie Review: ‘Testament of Youth’

The times critic stephen holden reviews “testament of youth.”.

By Stephen Holden

• June 4, 2015

“ Testament of Youth ,” James Kent ’s stately screen adaptation of the British author Vera Brittain’s 1933 World War I memoir, evokes the march of history with a balance and restraint exhibited by few movies with such grand ambitions. Most similar films strain at the seams with bombast and sentimentality. This one, with a screenplay by Juliette Towhidi (“Calendar Girls”), is consciously old-fashioned — or should I say traditional? — while maintaining a sober perspective.

The movie unashamedly invokes two famous scenes in Hollywood movies films set during wartime. A tearful farewell at a train station strongly echoes Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker’s parting as he goes off to fight and die in the 1944 tearjerker “Since You Went Away.”

An even more conspicuous allusion is a crane shot at a French field hospital where countless wounded and dying soldiers are surveyed from above as the widening focus takes in almost unimaginable suffering in a sea of mud. This powerful moment isn’t spoiled by its resemblance to a similar overhead shot of the streets of Atlanta packed with wounded Confederate soldiers in “Gone With the Wind.” Quite the contrary, it reminds you of the degree to which Hollywood molded our ideas of conflict and places “Testament of Youth” in a continuum of commercial high-minded war movies.

“Testament of Youth,” however, is not fiction; Vera and the other major characters are real-life figures who faced the horrors of the First World War. The movie is also the stronger for having no battle sequences or scenes depicting acts of courage, though you hear about such heroics after the fact. There are just enough shots of life in the trenches to give a glimpse of a hell, peopled by exhausted, mud-covered soldiers who are almost unrecognizable from the vital young men who left Britain thinking they were bound for glory. Other scenes in army hospitals in England and behind the lines in France are unrelievedly grim tableaus.

All this is viewed through the eyes of Vera, portrayed by the Swedish actress Alicia Vikander (“Anna Karenina,” “Ex Machina”), who gives her character a purposeful edge of impatience and bitterness. “Testament of Youth” might be described as a feminist war film, because it is saturated with Vera’s frustration at her parents’ limited ambitions for her and later with her contempt for war. It isn’t until the end that she delivers a scathing antiwar diatribe.

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Testament of youth.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 2 Reviews
• Kids Say 3 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Heartrending WWI drama has heavy content, strong heroine.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Testament of Youth is a historical drama based on Vera Brittain's same-titled memoir about being young during World War I. The story of her life as an aspiring Oxford student, bride-to-be, and battlefield nurse is both heartrending and violent. It shows the horror of trench…

Why Age 14+?

Several intense sequences set in battlefield/military hospitals; soldiers are bl

A couple flirts, stares longingly at each other, writes each other poems, and sh

Frequent smoking (accurate for the time period). Adults drink and toast in resta

British slang like "bloody" and "sod."

Any Positive Content?

Vera was a pioneering young woman who advocated for a chance to test for/attend

Conveys the importance of higher education for women, the way war changes people

Violence & Scariness

Several intense sequences set in battlefield/military hospitals; soldiers are bleeding, missing limbs, and in various stages of injury and illness. Many characters die, all due to war injuries. Moments when nurses are covered in blood while tending to a dying man or cleaning a man's waste. Scenes of devastating grief. A man knocks a woman to the ground, mostly by accident.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A couple flirts, stares longingly at each other, writes each other poems, and shares a few passionate kisses, one time lying down on the grass and caressing each other.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Frequent smoking (accurate for the time period). Adults drink and toast in restaurants and on Armistice Day.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Vera was a pioneering young woman who advocated for a chance to test for/attend Oxford, bravely worked as a military nurse, and stayed committed to her work despite multiple moments of grief. Edward and his friends all went to war to defend and protect their country, despite the risk of dying. Vera also returns to Oxford to finish her degree, believes in pacifism, and eventually writes one of the definitive accounts of being young during WWI.

Positive Messages

Conveys the importance of higher education for women, the way war changes people forever, and the universal truth that war, no matter how noble, leads to death and the loss of a generation of young soldiers. Additional themes include courage and perseverance.

Parents need to know that Testament of Youth is a historical drama based on Vera Brittain's same-titled memoir about being young during World War I. The story of her life as an aspiring Oxford student, bride-to-be, and battlefield nurse is both heartrending and violent. It shows the horror of trench warfare -- young men bloodied and missing limbs, blind, and in various stages of injury -- and many characters die, some in terrible pain, bleeding, and calling for loved ones. Expect some drinking and historically accurate smoking, but there's no sexual content aside from a few passionate kisses between Vera ( Alicia Vikander ) and her beau/fiance. And the language is tame ("bloody," "sod off"), so it's really just the violence that will determine whether your teen is ready to see this war drama/romance. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (3)

Based on 2 parent reviews

A Reminder of Why War Never Should Happen.

Great moving film, mature for younger children, what's the story.

TESTAMENT OF YOUTH is based on the late British writer and pacifist Vera Brittain's ( Alicia Vikander ) memoir about her experiences as an Oxford student-turned-war nurse during World War I. The movie opens on Armistice Day in 1918 and then flashes back four years to 1914, a breezier time when the most dire thing on Vera's mind was getting her father ( Dominic West ) to agree to let her take the Oxford entrance exam. Vera's brother, Edward ( Taron Egerton ), is home for the Easter holidays with his two boarding school pals, Victor ( Colin Morgan ) and Roland ( Kit Harington ), both of whom have obvious crushes on the beautiful but intimidatingly focused Vera. After she and Roland discover they share a love of writing poetry, they strike up a romantic correspondence. But just as Vera and the boys are all preparing to enter Oxford, war breaks out, and Roland enlists. Eventually all the young men are off risking their lives, so Vera leaves Oxford to volunteer as a nurse -- a decision that makes her a witness to the horrors of war, even as she experiences her own devastation.

Is It Any Good?

Veteran British TV director James Kent's feature debut is both wonderful and heartbreaking. It's the tale of a young woman whose dreams came true, only to be cruelly dashed as the Great War ravaged an entire generation of her peers, including men she loved, tended to, and watched die in front of her eyes. Vikander, a Swedish actor gifted with extraordinary acting skills and a truly luminescent beauty, gives a quiet but fierce performance. The cinematographer's many close-ups are welcome, because Vikander conveys so much with her eyes -- from disappointment and anger to joy, love, and grief. Her portrayal of Vera as first a feisty teen and eventually a traumatized young woman hoping to find some meaning in of a war that offered none is unforgettably powerful.

Surrounding Vikander is a fabulous ensemble, from Harington, Egerton, and Morgan as the trio of young officers she knows best to West and Emily Watson as her concerned parents and Miranda Richardson as her feminist dean at Oxford. They all play their parts well, with Harington especially effective as Vera's love interest, Roland -- a young man uniquely suited to her. Roland supports the suffragette movement, has a professional writer for a mother, and writes Vera passionate poems. There's a lot of sadness in Testament of Youth , but it's not played as melodrama. Even a century later, WWI has much to teach us about the irreversible damage that even the most righteous of wars can cause.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Testament of Youth . Do you think it's necessary for a war-themed film to have violent scenes? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How do depictions of World War II and more recent wars compare to those of World War I? What are some other movies about WWI?

Unlike many, this war story is told from a woman's perspective. How have women's roles changed since WWI? How did the war impact Vera?

How do the characters in Testament of Youth demonstrate courage and perseverance ? Why are these important character strengths ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : June 12, 2015
• On DVD or streaming : October 20, 2015
• Cast : Alicia Vikander , Kit Harington , Dominic West
• Director : James Kent
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Book Characters , Brothers and Sisters , Friendship , History
• Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance
• Run time : 129 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : thematic material including bloody and disturbing war related images
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : August 9, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Paths of Glory

A Very Long Engagement

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Movie Reviews

Movie review: 'testament of youth'.

Kenneth Turan

The British drama is based on the best-selling World War I memoir of Vera Brittain, who gives up her studies at Oxford to enlist as a nurse in the war.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Testament of Youth Reviews

Though it’s a story based around war, there isn’t much carnage for audiences to digest or be reminded of. Instead, we are prompted to remember the loss through love.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2024

This beautifully crafted and hearbreaking tale about a woman and the impact of war delivers lessons we should have learned long ago.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2021

Both an excellent drama and a feminist call to arms, Testament of Youth is absolutely unmissable.

A handsome and well-acted World War I biopic, but less affecting than it could have been...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 27, 2021

Based on a true and well-documented story but a dose or three of melodrama - does she really have to get such bad news on her wedding day? - blunts the power of the story.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 3, 2021

Beautiful, moving yet grim, Testament of Youth is very obviously awards-bait, but one that finally gives Alicia Vikander an opportunity to shine.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 19, 2019

Emotional, enthralling and well made, this timely cinematic sensation shines through its leading lady who befits the indomitable woman she portrays.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 31, 2019

One of the best of the year so far for sure.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Apr 22, 2019

Glides with sorrowful grace, pitching at a respectful and tear-inducing tone.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2018

Those who enjoy a biopic will enjoy this film. Also, those who like a good period drama - the attention to detail and faithful recreation of Edwardian Britain will delight and educate in equal measure.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2018

Vikander, last seen in Ex Machina, perfectly embodies all of these complex traits without allowing the performance to disintegrate into mere histrionics.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Oct 17, 2017

Grim but not unwatchably so.

Full Review | Oct 11, 2017

With expert cinematography and the help of Vikander's powerful physical expressiveness, he (Kent) manages to paint a much-needed picture of women during wartime. Even better, it's not all pretty.

Full Review | Aug 2, 2017

Coolly directed by James Kent, the movie's anchored by the grave, delicately featured Vikander who's able to convey youthful romanticism without ever seeming childish.

Full Review | Apr 26, 2017

Nimbly tip toes around potential schmaltz, but still delivers the expected quota of emotion.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 22, 2016

An exquisite piece of work that shimmers with authentic emotion.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 27, 2016

It's very nicely, if a little safely made, and gives you a compelling sense of how blithely an entire generation was squandered.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 26, 2016

The actors are all extremely fine, with special credit extending not just to Vikander but to Colin Morgan in wonderfully open-hearted form as a fellow member of an all-but-lost generation.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2016

As this is a film about a witness bearer, it does well to capitalize on Vikander's perpetually observant eyes, which convey tenderness, intelligence, shock, incomprehension, comprehension, resiliency, and finally wisdom.

Full Review | Dec 31, 2015

This incredibly emotional film looks at one young woman who saw both her brother and fianc volunteer to fight in the trenches.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 22, 2015

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Testament Of Youth, film review: Vera Brittain adaptation grows more powerful the darker it becomes

(12a) james kent, 130 mins starring: alicia vikander, kit harington, dominic west, emily watson, article bookmarked.

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Billy Wilder famously warned against self-conscious camerawork. The early parts of Testament of Youth, adapted from Vera Brittain's memoir, are so full of stylised lighting, fussy costume and production design, evocative of old Merchant Ivory films, and showy camera movements that it is all too easy to be distracted from the story that is being told.

This, though, is a film that grows more powerful the darker it becomes. To the consternation of her father (Dominic West), Vera (Alicia Vikander) wants to go to Oxford and vows that she will never get married. Her dream is to become a writer.

Then the First World War starts and she leaves university to become a nurse on the front line. The carnage, death and squalor she encounters is a very long way removed from the privileged world she has left behind. Her relationship with Roland (Kit Harington) takes on a new intensity as both realise that their planned marriage may never happen.

Swedish actress Vikander, first discovered in Lisa Langseth's films, gives an extraordinary performance as Vera: hyper-sensitive, impulsive but also courageous in the face of horror and bereavement. In spite of the sometimes mannered storytelling style and the over-abundance of frocks and bonnets, we are aware of the rawness of her grief and of her dismay and anger at the way an entire generation is being given up for slaughter.

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‘testament of youth’: film review.

Alicia Vikander plays a WWI English nurse in this adaptation of Vera Brittain's much-treasured memoir of love and war

By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

Contributing Film Critic

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Striking an elegantly sustained balance between intimacy and historical scope, director James Kent ‘s WWI-set epic Testament of Youth encompasses nearly all of the virtues of classical British period drama and nearly none of the vices. A respectful fileting of Vera Brittain ‘s hefty 600-page memoir, first published in 1933, the picture stars fast-ascending Swedish talent Alicia Vikander ( A Royal Affair , Anna Karenina , the upcoming The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ) as the indomitable Brittain , a young Englishwoman from a well-to-do background who experienced the horrors of war firsthand. The rest of the cast is rounded out by an impressively eclectic roll-call of relative unknowns ( Taron Egerton , Colin Morgan ), rising British stars ( Kit Harington from Game of Thrones , Alexandra Roach from The Iron Lady ) and veterans ( Dominic West , Emily Watson , Miranda Richardson ), all finely cast.

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Scheduled to open locally in January 2015, Testament could prove to be a sleeper hit with its cross-quadrant appeal to older audiences who treasured the book and the 1979 BBC mini-series as well as youngsters drawn by the handsome cast, tragic love story and built-in history lesson.  Abroad, distributors will need to drum up critical support and use canny marketing to attract viewers who like high-quality, Masterpiece Theater -style entertainment.

The Bottom Line A best of British effort in every respect, this handsome production consistently impresses

Even for viewers who know diddly-squat about Brittain , the book and its spin-offs, those sensitive to cinematic atmosphere will glean that something bad is going to happen any minute when the action starts in 1914. Everything looks that little bit too magic-hour, light-flare-pretty idyllic when we first meet the characters. As it happens, the filmmakers have adopted a slow-burn approach, allowing enough time for viewers to invest in the characters before the atrocities commence.

Raised in rural Derbyshire (although the locations used were mostly in Yorkshire), whip-smart, if somewhat stroppy teenage beauty Vera ( Vikander ) and her kind-hearted brother Edward ( Egerton ) are the offspring of a successful industrialist (West) and his sweet bourgeois wife (Watson). Much to her father’s chagrin, Vera is already a bit of a bluestocking who wants to study at Oxford. She can already hold her own in discussions of poetry and ideas with Edward and his prep-school friends, gentle Victor (Morgan) and the more confident Roland Leighton ( Harington ) with whom Vera sparks romantically. However, she must contend with the sexism of the period, which insists that young ladies of her class should stay at home and practice the pianoforte, while the sexual repression of the era dictates that a chaperone ( Joanna Scanlon ) must always be present for her outings with Roland. They barely get a chance to hold hands, and yet Robert Hardy’s tactile cinematography and the use of quick, sensual flashbacks is sufficient to suggest the erotic heat between them.

Producers David Heyman (the Harry Potter series, Gravity ) and Rosie Alison ( The Boy In Striped Pyjamas ), and director Kent (making his feature debut here after a number of documentaries and dramas for British TV), adeptly pull the levers so as to decrease on the romance plot by increments and bring up the volume on the looming war. Soon, all the young men are signing up to fight in a conflict everyone, including Vera, predicts will be over by Christmas.  

As we know, it didn’t work out that way. However, by sticking closely to Vera’s point of view, serviced further by voiceover readings from her letters, the film gets across in a personal way the horrifying scale of the war, for example when she scans the acres of newspapers listings each day for the names of those who have “fallen” in combat.

Elsewhere, shots of men in the trenches and later, via a Gone With the Wind -style crane shot of the wounded at a field hospital, compensate for the lack of combat scenes, illustrating what we need to know about the soldiers’ experience. While still keeping the focus on the heroine, the well-researched script by Juliette Towhidi ( Calendar Girls ) manages to individualize the men in Vera’s life through small scenes and details, fleshing out the fact, for instance, that Edward is probably gay and Victor carries and unrequited torch for Vera. Unsurprisingly, the almost-impossibly likeable and worthy Roland makes the biggest impression, especially in scenes where Harington’s voiceover reads poems by the real Leighton that he wrote Vera from the front.

Previously best known for playing the scowling, deeply boring Jon Snow in Game of Thrones , Harington is a revelation here, displaying a range and a lightness of touch that’s as surprising as it is refreshing. It helps that he’s so easy on the eye, of course, but then nearly all the younger actors are impeccably pretty, as if to underscore what a great loss to the gene pool the war to end all wars was. But the rest of the supporting cast are no slouches either, and even with their much  smaller roles several manage to make indelible impressions, particularly West with a howl of despair (delivered off camera no less) and Richardson with a touchingly underplayed scene when she receives news of a death. There are a lot of telegrams and phone calls throughout, nearly every one of them a harbinger of death, a slightly repetitive device.

In the end, though, Vikander owns the movie, making this a very auspicious breakout in her first leading role in an English-language production. Technically, it’s hard to fault: she nails the accent, cries convincingly on cue, and has an astonishing physical presence. But what’s even more impressive is the way she puts across Vera’s intelligence, her cussedness (she’s even a bit of a pain in the neck sometimes), and it’s the quieter moments that impress most, especially coupled with the way Kent and Co tactically underplay certain key emotional scenes in order to deliver a bigger pay off later. That said, the filmmakers are not afraid to really milk an emotional moment, like a farewell on a train platform that audaciously reinvigorates a war-film cliche of yore.

In terms of craftsmanship, Testament is an exemplar of all the best things about British films. Budgeted at $10 million, it looks the bomb, like something that cost a lot more. Consolata Boyle ‘s lavish costume design, period perfect but knitted with nuance that reveals character, is especially deserving of praise, as is Jon Henson’s thoughtfully coordinated production design. Max Richter ‘s soundtrack sometimes sounds slightly too similar to his previous film scores elsewhere, but it still has a majestic beauty, with tiny aural echoes of War Requiem , a musical memorial written by another great Britten, Benjamin .

Production companies: A BBC Films, Heyday Films, Screen Yorkshire, BFI presentation of a Heyday Films production in association with Hotwells Productions, Nordisk Film Production and Lipsync Cast: Alicia Vikander , Kit Harington , Taron Egerton, Colin Morgan, Dominic West, Emily Watson, Joanna Scanlan, Miranda Richardson, Jonathan Bailey, Henry Garrett, Hayley Atwell, Alexandra Roach, Nicholas Le Prevost, Anna Chancellor Director: James Kent Screenwriter: Juliette Towhidi Producers: David Heyman, Rosie Alison Executive producers: Christine Langan, Joe Oppenheimer, Richard Mansell, Hugo Heppell, Zygi Kamasa Director of photography: Robert Hardy Production designer: Jon Henson Costume designer: Consolata Boyle Editor: Lucia Zucchetti Music: Max Richter Casting: Lucy Bevan Sales: Protagonist Pictures

No rating, 129 minutes  

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Testament of Youth Is a Necessary Reminder of the Impact and Horror of War

Should you ever be tempted to wax nostalgic for an age in which wars were fought according to the laws of cause and effect and for reasons that may confidently be labeled “rational,” pick up Vera Brittain’s World War I memoir Testament of Youth or steel yourself for James Kent’s mournful, very fine new film starring Alicia Vikander as Brittain. The “Great War” made so little sense relative to its cost in lives that it gave birth to a new era in literature and art and a new breed of tragedy; after this, nothing would be expected to happen according to divine logic. Despite a centennial and such recent works as War Horse , the horror of the war has faded, at least on this side of the Atlantic. It’s time for the testament of Brittain and the Brits to be reheard.

The beginning of Testament of Youth prepares you for the end. In a prologue set in 1918 on the day of the Armistice, the palette is a chill blue and Vera wanders dazed through the jubilant crowds into a church where mourners light candles for the dead. Warm colors are reserved for early flashbacks in which Vera swims in a pond beside her brother, Edward (Taron Egerton), and his smitten friend, Victor (Colin Morgan), buoyed by the prospect of entrance exams for Oxford University — and a place alongside the men who regard her with awe.

But she returns to her well-to-do Newcastle house to find that her father (Dominic West) has bought her a piano with the money she’d requested be spent on tuition. As she rails against prevailing social norms — among them that young ladies of her class should choose marriage over higher education — she is gobsmacked by the arrival of Edward’s dreamboat friend Roland Leighton (Kit Harington). Perhaps marriage and university are not mutually exclusive … Soon, she and Roland are strolling through the fields discussing his poetry, which she finds shimmering and lyrical but not sufficiently personal. You know nothing, Roland Leighton . Oh, dear: Has she driven him off?

So far, so conventionally romantic, and the giddiness continues through Vera’s plucky assertion to a dubious female Oxford instructor (Miranda Richardson) that in spite of her pampered exterior, she has the strength and conviction to be an outstanding scholar. When the archduke is assassinated and war eventually ensues, young men of all classes are eager to enlist: “They say that the war will be short!” The first glimpses of barbed wire, trenches, lakes of mud, and the effects of poison gas do more than dampen the mood. They alter the genre altogether.

Working from a deft if perhaps too tidy screenplay by Juliette Towhidi, Kent brings an aura of jitter and claustrophobia to material that’s often a springboard for epic directorial flourishes. That this is partly the result of a low budget (production was begun without financing fully in place) is beside the point: A resourceful artist makes a virtue of his or her limitations. As Vera — now a nurse — hovers helplessly over rows of dead and dying men, the devastation registers as starkly as the sight of exploding shells. It’s the aftermath that Brittain witnessed, enough meaningless death to make her understand the words of the common soldier Michael Williams at Shakespeare’s Agincourt: “I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle.”

With appearances in this film, Ex Machina , and the coming The Man From U.N.C.L.E. , The Light Between Oceans , and The Danish Girl , Vikander is this year’s Jessica Chastain, and on the basis of what I’ve seen, the hype for the young Swedish actress is justified. Apart from her unconventional beauty (still photographs don’t do her justice), she has a ballerina’s gift of intense focus and the ability to move in a way that’s just so . Instinctively she knows that Vera Brittain’s primary role in the story is not to wrest control of the narrative but to bear witness — and to grieve. Vera is a woman from whom everything is taken. She has no radiant perception of God on high and no final perception of transcendence. She writes in what she knows is a vain effort to fill an unfillable void.

Brittain’s turning point — in the film and her memoir — is when she is assigned to minister in the field hospital not to her fallen countrymen but to the “dirty Huns,” many of whom are delirious and dying. Fluent in German, she understands their cries and can no longer bring herself to hate them for the deaths of her loved ones. Her Testament of Youth (not completed until 1933) became a cornerstone of the pacifist movement, and led her to take a public stand (dramatized in the film) against punishing the defeated “Huns” in the spirit of revenge. She was right not merely from a humanist standpoint but a tactical one: The rise of the Third Reich was at least in part a consequence of the Allies’ harsh retributions. There was a logic to World War II — though not the kind invoked in tributes to our “Greatest Generation.”

Brittain spoke for the ones who couldn’t speak, who were robbed of their futures for reasons they couldn’t understand at the behest of men who couldn’t have explained if they’d tried. Watching the final scenes of Testament of Youth , it’s clear that her stand is as unfashionable today as it was then. Who dares to say none die well that die in battle ? It’s perfectly understandable that Jeb Bush would cite respect for dead soldiers as grounds for refraining from criticizing his brother’s catastrophic occupation of Iraq: To say that those men and women died for at best a mistake and at worst a criminal lie would be — in the eyes of the Americans whose votes he seeks — to rob their deaths of meaning. How could their patriotism survive? How could anyone accept the idea of a divine logic?

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Review: ‘Testament of Youth’ traces WWI’s grave effect on woman’s life

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From first to last, “Testament of Youth” sweeps you away. Unapologetically emotional and impeccably made in the classic manner, it tells the kind of potent, many-sided story whose unforeseen complexities can come only courtesy of a life that lived them all.

Based on Vera Brittain’s deeply felt 1933 memoir of her World War I experiences, a modern classic that has never gone out of print and kept Virginia Wolfe up all night reading it, “Testament of Youth” is an attempt to write history in terms of personal life that is wrenched out of its author’s very soul. Only that way, Brittain wrote, “could I rescue something that might be of value, some element of truth and hope and usefulness, from the smashing up of my own youth by the War.”

Brittain’s trademark fiery intensity and passionate attitude have been transferred intact to this film (finely adapted by screenwriter Juliette Towhidi and feelingly directed by James Kent) which seems to breathe with the writer’s internal essence.

Key to that success is the all-out performance by Sweden’s Alicia Vikander, very much the actress of the moment after her charismatic work as the enigmatic Ava in “Ex Machina.” She’s thrown herself into this project unreservedly and pulled everyone else — including Kit Harington, Taron Egerton and Colin Morgan, the actors who play the men in her life — along with her.

While Vikander’s role in “Ex Machina” was a model of artifice and restraint, here she takes off in an opposite direction, playing a more high-spirited if equally determined young woman, an impetuous spitfire who embraces life without hesitation.

Yet when we first encounter Brittain, she is in a daze, her haunted face looking straight ahead and filling the screen. It is Nov. 11, 1918, Armistice Day, and the London street she’s on is erupting in unrestrained jubilation. The end of the first world war, however, has come too late for this young woman, has left her, she fears, with no reason to go on living.

“Testament of Youth” then flashes back to 1914, only four years past but eons ago in terms of who Brittain was and how she thought her life would proceed.

The setting is Derbyshire, where Brittain, her adored younger brother Edward (Egerton) and his Oxford friend Victor (Morgan), are swimming in a lake near the Brittain family home. Young, handsome, laughing and teasing, these individuals in the full blush of youth have no idea how fragile their world is, no notion that they are about to become a lost generation.

Director Kent, a British television veteran making his first theatrical feature, has not only seen to it that the film’s period re-creation is done with great care, he’s had specific ideas of how he wanted “Testament” to be shot.

Working with experienced cinematographer Rob Hardy (who shot “Ex Machina” as well as “The Invisible Woman” and part of the “Red Riding” trilogy), West has gone for an intimate approach that immerses us in the story with Brittain, encouraging us to go through what she is going through at the moment it’s happening.

The young woman’s spirit is visible almost immediately, as she clashes with her parents (canny veterans Emily Watson and Dominic West) over her dream of being a rare female student at Oxford’s Somerville College, a situation her parents are opposed to because it might make her a potentially unmarriageable bluestocking.

No sooner, however, does Brittain insist she never wants to marry anyone than another of her brother’s Oxford friends, handsome, sensitive Roland Leighton (Harington, Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones”) walks in the door. The connection between them is immediately clear, but this is not going to be easy.

As the kerfuffle about Brittain applying to Oxford underlines, women’s lives were unimaginably constrained only 100 years ago. As a young woman, Brittain needs to be chaperoned when she’s out in public, especially when a potential suitor like Leighton appears. Difficult as that limitation was for the couple, it leads to extremely romantic cinema, as even the most casual joining of fingers becomes electric with furtive passion.

In the background of all of this, visible in random newspaper headlines, is the inexorable buildup to world war. Suddenly everyone’s lives get very serious very fast, and one by one all the young men in Brittain’s life, drawn by an unthinking combination of patriotism and naiveté, volunteer for what they think will be a few months of military service.

The reality of war, however, proved to be catastrophically different, and Brittain herself, unable to concentrate on anything else in her life, volunteers to be a nurse. She eventually ends up at Etaples, a hospital in France close to the front lines, where the monstrous extent of the carnage she sees is almost too much to bear.

One of Brittain’s goals in writing “Testament of Youth” was to show, “without any polite disguise, the agony of war to the individual, and the destructiveness to the human race.” And though she ended the conflict “with my deepest emotions paralyzed if not dead,” her life, as it turns out, was far from over.

What makes Vera Brittain’s story so exceptional is the fluid way all these elements in her life, the passionate feminism, the love story, the war years and what they led to, naturally flow together. The “Testament of Youth” we see is an exceptional romance, but it is a romance with a considerable amount on its mind, a romance with lessons for our time as much as for hers.

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‘Testament of Youth’

MPAA rating: PG-13 for thematic material including bloody and disturbing war related images.

Running time: 2 hours, 9 minutes

Playing Arclight Hollywood, Landmark, West Los Angeles

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Testament of Youth

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

The Academy once got off by sprinkling Oscar gold all over traditional World War I epics — Wings and All Quiet on the Western Front are both Best Picture winners — and snubbing the truly great ones, such as Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion and Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. It’s anybody’s guess what the Academy of Old Farts & Sciences will make of Testament of Youth, the rare WWI film that centers on, of all things, a woman. She’d be Vera Brittain, a young, well-bred Brit whose bestselling 1933 memoir detailed her transformation from aspiring poet — headstrong enough to get into Oxford — to battlefield nurse, a pre-feminist warrior who sees the bloody effects of war firsthand and soldiers on.

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Swedish beauty Alicia Vikander, who proved herself a find and then some in Ex Machina , is electrifying as Vera, playing this firebrand with a tough core of intelligence and wit. Vikander is up to every challenge set for her by first-time feature director James Kent, screenwriter Juliette Towhidi, and producer David Heyman, whose experience on the Harry Potter films gives Testament of Youth a high-style, Masterpiece Theater sheen. Vikander, bless her, busts through all that veneer  as she steers her own path through a world of men. First, there’s blustering daddy (Dominic West), who thinks a woman’s place is anywhere but  university or war. Her younger brother Edward (Taron Egerton) is more sympathetic. The hopelessly devoted Victor (Colin Morgan) just moons after her. Only the swooningly romantic Roland (Kit Harington) wins her heart, and that’s by writing her poetry. 

It’s great to see the excellent Harington — Jon Snow on  Game of Thrones — break of that bleak midwinter and play an artist  whose poet’s eye is blurred by combat. Harington and Vikander provide the spark the film needs to get us through the tribulations and tragedies that pile on with numbing regularity. You leave Testament of Youth feeling some of the impact that Brittain’s book must have had at the time. But if you want to feel everything, it’s right there on Vikander’s raw and radiant face. This is an actress you would willingly follow anywhere.

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Testament of Youth

A British woman recalls coming of age during World War I - a story of young love, the futility of war, and how to make sense of the darkest times. A British woman recalls coming of age during World War I - a story of young love, the futility of war, and how to make sense of the darkest times. A British woman recalls coming of age during World War I - a story of young love, the futility of war, and how to make sense of the darkest times.

• Juliette Towhidi
• Vera Brittain
• Alicia Vikander
• Kit Harington
• Taron Egerton
• 92 User reviews
• 124 Critic reviews
• 76 Metascore
• 5 wins & 7 nominations

Top cast 77

• Roland Leighton

• Edward Brittain

• Mr. Brittain

• Victor Richardson

• Mrs. Brittain

• Miss Lorimer

• Exam Candidate

• Clare Leighton

• Mr. Leighton

• Mrs. Leighton

• Boy on Bicycle

• Sister Jones

• Nurse Scott
• Nurse Milton
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Saoirse Ronan was originally cast as Vera Brittain but she dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Alicia Vikander replaced her.
• Goofs As Roland and Vera meet in late 1914 before he leaves for France, Aunt Belle notices that Roland is sick and she talks about how influenza is ripping through the troops and it's in all the newspapers "Spanish Influenza they call it." The earliest known case of what would only later be called the Spanish flu was in March of 1918--and reports of the plague were zealously suppressed in the press of the belligerent nations for fear that it damaged morale. The only reason the disease, which actually was first documented in Kansas, was named "Spanish Flu", was because Spain was neutral in the war and the Spanish papers were free to report cases, giving the wrong impression elsewhere that Spain was hit first and harder by the disease.

Roland Leighton : Down the long white road we walked together. Down between the grey hills and the heather. You seemed all brown and soft, just like linnet. Your errant hair had shadowed sunbeams in it. And there shone all April in your eyes.

• Crazy credits During the opening credits, World War I guns can be heard in the background.
• Connections Featured in Film '72: Episode #44.1 (2015)
• Soundtracks Silver Threads Among the Gold Written by H.P. Danks & Eben E. Rexford Performed by John McCormack Source: Library and Archives Canada/Silver Threads Among the Gold 1922/AMICUS 31399658

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 9 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Review: testament of youth.

The film’s inferno of horrors are undoubtedly visceral, but psychologically implosive rather than entrails-exploding.

Opening months after the centenary of the First World War, the sumptuous yet solemn feature debut of television director James Kent is a worthy and moving tribute to that flowering generation whose memory bloomed so spectacularly last year as the Tower of London’s famous dry moat ran blood red with over 800,000 poppies. A field of these flowers adorns much of the film’s promotional material, the U.S. one-sheet in particular, intensifying their hue to a flame that’s accurately indicative of this atypically vivid biopic.

Testament of Youth is both the coming-of-age and key-witness account of Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander), a free-minded and irrepressible feminist who, determined to sit exams for Oxford and be her own woman, was unexpectedly shaped and forever shadowed by the outbreak of WWI. Charting her experience of a mindless slaughter that saw her lose her brother, lover, and two dearest male friends, she became a lifelong pacifist campaigner and later wrote the revered memoir that gives the film its title. Juliette Towhidi’s exhaustively researched screenplay pulls not only from this source, but Mark Bostridge and Paul Berry’s biography and Brittain’s personal correspondence, compellingly encompassing so much of this time of incomparable change, human annihilation, and social upheaval which saw Edwardian-era values ripped away and an age of innocence brought to a definitively devastating end.

Brittain may have spoken for a generation, but wisely, the film doesn’t attempt to do the same. The autobiographical voice is perceived rather than heard through cinematographer Rob Hardy’s fluid and subjective camera, proximate to first-person experience as it continually fights to find a point of focus amid turbulent scenes of Vera working as a volunteer nurse, surrounded by people living and dead. It’s a visual language former documentarian Kent powerfully establishes in the opening of Armistice Day 1918, the camera pushing and shoving behind a broken woman disconnected from the cheering crowds around her, seen only as a blur. Repeated close-ups of Vikander’s stoically baffled, uncomprehending eyes transmit all the trauma of the trenches without the need of a view from the battlefield.

Here’s a war movie whose stark disillusionments are measured not by the catastrophic off-screen death toll, nor the unmitigated miseries of the men Vera tries to save, but a consciousness so haunted by the likely loss of her loved ones that the separation anxiety from her fiancé, Roland Leighton (Kit Harrington), is sharpened to a poignancy beyond verbal expression. Fittingly, then, Testament of Youth forgoes sound and fury for the soundless clamor of a bad dream, with intermittent shots of Vera staring out at us in palpitating silence. The film’s inferno of horrors are undoubtedly visceral, but psychologically implosive rather than entrails-exploding.

With the stately sweep of many a BBC production, the script’s reliance on private letters and poetry prides a feeling of complex interiority over visual pomp and prestige, though the lighting maintains a visual elegance throughout. An extended pre-war sequence of carefree, autumnal idyll is such a drowsy intoxication of shinning greenery that the complacent mood lends it a creeping, inescapable sense of foreboding, a thickening fog appearing to separate Vera from the other male principals who already feel like the doomed ghosts of memories that she must learn to live with.

As a young woman of the time living a sheltered life of limited horizons, Vera chaffed against a provincial society not encouraging of the capacity for thought in girls who ought only to be concerned with their eligibility for marriage during debutante season (her father will gladly pay for an expensive piano, but refuses to put the money toward a year at Oxford). Vera’s bond with the young men in her life is such that she lives for them and vicariously through them. Treated as an equal among her male contemporaries, theirs is a friendship that forges an insoluble connection between the personal and political. Authentically period-looking co-stars Harrington, Taron Egerton, and Colin Morgan tenderly convey the shared importance of this bond with charming playfulness and gentle protectiveness, but their shared scenes together are entirely owned by the film’s lead actress.

Using her unblinking gaze to transcendently terrifying effect in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina , the camera loves Vikander just as much when grief and sorrow flit across her face, only to harden into willful determination. In an equally poised performance of compassionate intensity, rigorous intelligence and joyful feistiness, Vikander portrays Vera as a young woman whose mind is always working to articulate hellish history in the moment, never allowing herself to forget the lost youth of her friends that was barely known. It’s credit then to the on-screen believability of mutual love and admiration the quartet feel for one another, that without having to elegize a generation, the film does well enough to satisfy the deeply felt obligations of Brittain’s own war dead.

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Testament Of Youth Review

16 Jan 2015

130 minutes

Testament Of Youth

War is coming. You can feel the impending heartache even as this story opens with youthful frolics in the river. The story is that of famed pacifist Vera Brittain, whose Testament Of Youth is one of the few published First World War memoirs from a woman’s hand — a narrative that has encouraged successive generations to keep striving for their dreams even as they slip from view.

This adaptation is the feature debut from documentary-maker James Kent who introduces Vera (Vikander), and the young men in her life, during an Edwardian summer under sun-bright skies.Vera fights for her place at Oxford; she wins. She meets the dashing Roland (Harington), they swap poetry and she fights for their love; she wins. Everything seems spiffing. Except, of course, it’s not. There is war in Europe and the menfolk enlist. Everybody loses.

We know what will happen.The surprise lies not in their fate but in Vera’s tenacious response. She surrenders a hard-fought university place and her dreams of a writer’s life to nurse victims of battle, first at home and then at the front, English or German, she has compassion for all. Vera is an absorbing character and Vikander’s is a compelling portrayal.Vikander came to attention in both A Royal Affair and as Kitty in Anna Karenina. Here she doesn’t so much catch the eye as dazzle it, exuding like Vera an emotional intelligence that far outstrips her years. She is at her brightest when the story gets darker while Kent directs with stylish restraint, both sober-eyed without stinting on the emotion.

Some moments from Vera’s life are familiar. Lovers at the railway station, the outsider among the Dreaming Spires, an amusing chaperone, a war to end before Christmas, the corrupted wedding day, a bad news phone-call — these vignettes populate dozens of dramas and can nudge even the oldest and most honest tales into the realm of melodrama. Kent’s film, which at times must skirt the boundary, never crosses the line.

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Movie Review: Testament of Youth (2014)

• Vincent Gaine
• Movie Reviews
• 2 responses
• --> January 15, 2015

There is a sub-genre of the war film that focuses on those away from combat. These films do not display the horrors of warfare or the camaraderie of men under fire, but instead the dramas of those left behind or serving their country behind the lines. Such a film is Testament of Youth , based on the memoir by Vera Brittain. It charts five years in the life of the young Vera, played with brittle resolve by Alicia Vikander, recounting her life before, during and immediately after the Great War. Along the way, we see her relationships with her parents, played with stiff British reserve by Dominic West and Emily Watson, her brother Edward (Taron Egerton) and two potential suitors, Victor (Colin Morgan) and Roland (Kit Harington). The film also charts the shift in Vera’s priorities, as she pursues entrance into Oxford University and her ambition of becoming a writer, to her subsequent volunteering as a nurse during the War, stationed first in Britain and then in France.

The film opens at the end of the Great War in November 1918. Director James Kent opens on Vera’s face, a blank expression that gives little indication of the experiences behind her eyes. The film then cuts back to 1914 and the teenage Vera opposing her father’s expectation that she find a husband. This sets up an intriguing feminist tract within the film, as Vera’s commitment to a university education proves a major generational tension, frowned upon by her parents but actively encouraged by her brother and friends. Vera’s journey to Oxford to take the entrance exam is characterized as one of wonder and amazement, while her encounter with Miss Lorimer (Miranda Richardson) demonstrates the obstacles she will face once she enters higher education. Although the suffrage movement is mentioned and Roland’s mother (Anna Chancellor), a novelist and newspaper writer, is something of a role model for Vera, the protagonist’s intellectual, creative and professional goals receive little screentime. Instead, the viewer is treated to a well-behaved costume drama, complete with passionate romance between Vera and Roland, against the backdrop of World War I. As a romance Testament of Youth is moderately successful: Vera and Roland are a pleasant enough couple and the obstacles to their relationship, including social convention and the outbreak of war, allow for some touching and charming moments.

Miss Vera Brittain.

The problem is that Vera’s story is more than a romance: Her experiences go far beyond her relationship with Roland and intersect all too briefly with larger social changes of the time. It is perhaps unfair to criticize the plot of a film based on a memoir, because such a story recounts the experiences of the author. Nonetheless, Testament of Youth feels like a missed opportunity to explore the social and cultural issues of the period, especially from a woman’s perspective. Vera is onscreen for practically the entire movie, yet we rarely get a sense of her perception of the events around her. Kent keeps his protagonist impenetrable, her various interests mentioned but not expanded upon. She wants to be a writer but we learn nothing of her writing — what inspires her, what moves her, why she has this supposed passion that the film seems passionless about. Roland fares a little better, his poems providing some indication of his creativity that is damaged by his war experiences. But his poems are delivered as voiceover in flashback scenes that sink into cloying cliché, robbing them of their potential power.

This disempowerment plagues the entire film, as sequences that should be emotionally powerful are distant and unengaging, the film presenting the events rather than involving the viewer. There are several moments of immense grief where the film seems uncertain whether to express numbing shock or devastating loss, and ends up cutting between extreme close-ups of Vera’s face to similar close-ups of nearby objects. This editing goes some way to presenting the slowing down of time in a moment of great anguish, but does not allow the viewer access to this anguish, resulting in a lack of emotional engagement. Worse are Kent’s clumsy montages to present Vera’s memories of her loved ones, again cutting from close-ups of Vera’s face to slo-mo action of Roland, Victor and Edward running through forest paths or smiling and laughing. Without an eyeline match or juxtaposition of similar motion within different shots, these montages are clunky and obvious.

These sequences demonstrate the film’s central problem — Vera is swept up in events far beyond her control, but the film does not sweep the viewer into Vera’s story. The performances are universally accomplished, every actor embodying their character and convincing the viewer that they are in these situations. The cinematography is beautiful, director of photography Rob Hardy making great use of the Yorkshire and Oxford locations. Max Richter’s score is mournful and speaks of the loss suffered by this generation, so many of which died young. The period detail is precise and at all times the viewer can believe they are looking through a window in the early 20th century. But therein lies the problem — all we do is look through this window but never are we made to feel a part of it. The events and characters remain distant and untouchable, relics of a bygone era that, when presented like this, seems lost and unreachable. It is perfectly possible to make a period film of this sort and draw the viewer in, communicating the plight of the characters and allowing the audience to share their emotional experiences. Films similar to Testament of Youth that do achieve this include “Atonement” and “The English Patient,” as well as the television series “Parade’s End.” These stories focus on the domestic, non-military side of war, using the conflict as a backdrop much like Kent’s film. For all its handsome production values, Testament of Youth fails to make its subject matter really come alive, and ends up feeling too well behaved, too polite, and too “English.”

Tagged: family , novel adaptation , nurse , WWI

Dr. Vincent M. Gaine is a film and television researcher. His first book, Existentialism and Social Engagement in the Films of Michael Mann was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2011. His work on film and media has been published in Cinema Journal and The Journal of Technology , Theology and Religion , as well as edited collections including The 21st Century Superhero and The Directory of World Cinema .

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'Movie Review: Testament of Youth (2014)' have 2 comments

January 15, 2015 @ 4:37 pm Kenny

This is the first time I’ve heard a movie get reprimanded for being “too English”.

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January 15, 2015 @ 9:14 pm SlinkMnk

Sounds like a pretentious snoozefest.

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Period Drama Review: Testament of Youth

Last Updated on September 12, 2021

“Testament of Youth” is an intimate, heartbreaking portrait of young, ambitious lives forever altered by war. Based on Vera Brittain’s memoir of her experiences during the First World War, “Testament of Youth” refocuses the traditional war narrative on the women left behind when men march off to the front.

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The historical drama never sets foot on the battlefield — nor does it need to. The war methodically strips away everything Vera holds dear.

Upon its publication in 1933, Testament of Youth gave a voice to a generation of British women left behind in the wake of the First World War. Brittain wrote candidly about her experiences nursing with the VAD, as well as about the hopelessness she felt at watching her loved ones march off to war.

By then a staunch anti-war advocate, Brittain described how feminism and pacifism could be interwoven, as she recounted how women at home were profoundly impacted by war’s destruction.

Testament of Youth , the film, translates this perspective into a beautifully observed elegy for the lives lost and changed.

We first meet Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl) on Armistice Day, where she’s pushing her way through the joyous crowd to escape to a quiet church. She can’t join in the raucous happiness, and as she sinks back into her memories, we begin to find out why.

Before the war, Vera is bound and determined to study at Somerville College, Oxford. She belongs there more than she does at home, where her parents (Dominic West, The Crown and Emily Watson, Gosford Park) expect her to play piano beautifully in order to attract a husband. Her beloved brother Edward (Taron Egerton, Rocketman) convinces her father to let Vera sit the entrance exam, and despite her provincial background she earns a place at Oxford.

Just as her academic future opens up, however, so do her romantic prospects. She begins a tentative courtship with her brother’s friend Roland (Kit Harington, Game of Thrones), based on their shared love of poetry and writing, and what is played at first as a gentle, comedic interlude quickly deepens into a passionate relationship. Everything is falling into place, Vera finally feels understood—and then the war breaks out.

In quick succession, Roland, Edward, and their friend Victor (Colin Morgan, The Living and the Dead) all join the British army. The war will be over by Christmas, they insist, and they likely won’t see any fighting. But any student of world history knows what happens next, as the war drags on into four years of unimaginable devastation.

This is where the film really shines. Director James Kent and writer Juliette Towhidi wisely avoid extended scenes of trench warfare—this is Vera’s story, after all—and instead focus on how she copes with being left behind.

In one wrenching scene, she sees Roland off at the train station, and they steal their last desperate kisses before she’s jostled back onto the platform. The train pulls away as soldiers and sweethearts wave, but instead of following the men to the front, the camera lingers on the women left on the platform. We see Vera’s anxious sadness and her chaperone’s dread of what might come next, and it’s more affecting than any shot of men blithely marching into battle might be.

For the first year of the war, she’s safe in Oxford, away from the worst effects of the war. Roland and Edward’s letters begin to suggest that it’s not the madcap adventure they thought it would be, and while she begs Roland to tell her the truth, he holds back. Home on leave, though, he can’t hide his depression from Vera, but when Edward and Victor join them, Roland plasters on a veneer of jovial cheer for his friends. He trusts her enough to let his guard down when they’re alone, but Vera can’t reconcile this broken, shellshocked man with the youthful boy she knew.

Vera can no longer watch the war unfold from afar, so she postpones her studies to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse. She serves first in England, then in France, and then she moves closer to the battlefield, facing its grim results in the hospital. With stoic determination, she sponges down her first wounded patient, all while struggling with her fears for Edward and Roland. Vikander visibly tamps down her emotions in a searing performance that reflects Vera’s growing disillusionment and despair.

Some of the film’s major turning points may seem too coincidental to be true, like a directorial decision to heighten the sense of tragedy. “Testament of Youth” hews closely to its source material, however, and this knowledge makes the inevitable deaths all the more heartbreaking. Brittain’s experiences need no embellishment.

By the end of the film, when Vera calmly states her intention never to forget, we can see and understand the passionate pacifist she’ll become.

Testament of Youth (2014) is AVAILABLE to STREAM Rated PG-13 Watch the TRAILER

Abby Murphy writes young adult books about girls discovering their strengths. A member of SCBWI and The Historical Novel Society, she is represented by Laura Crockett of Triada US Literary Agency. You can visit her blog here , where she writes about reading, writing, history, and her incurable Anglophilia.

If you enjoyed this post, wander over to The Period Films List . You’ll especially like the Best Period Dramas: First World War Era List and the Best Period Dramas: Interwar Era List . Also see the list of  Strong Women in Period Dramas . 

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2 Comments on Period Drama Review: Testament of Youth

I fondly remember that tv series from decades ago; it prompted me to read Brittain’s books. I’ve never been able to find it in dvd or streaming in the US.

Peggy L Drake

You should have mentioned the earlier serial version of Testament of Youth, which was able to take more time and cover more of the book’s content.

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Testament of youth.

Directed by James Kent

Divided by war. United by love.

Testament of Youth is a powerful story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman’s point of view. A searing journey from youthful hopes and dreams to the edge of despair and back again, it’s a film about young love, the futility of war and how to make sense of the darkest times.

Alicia Vikander Kit Harington Taron Egerton Colin Morgan Dominic West Emily Watson Hayley Atwell Anna Chancellor Miranda Richardson Joanna Scanlan Alexandra Roach Jenn Murray Henry Garrett Nicholas Le Prevost Nicholas Farrell Daisy Waterstone Niamh Cusack Teresa Churcher Xavier Atkins Heather Nicol Laura Elsworthy Naomi Everson Jonathan Bailey Charlotte Hope Josh Taylor

Director Director

Producers producers.

David Heyman Rosie Alison

Writers Writers

Juliette Towhidi Vera Brittain

Casting Casting

Editor editor.

Lucia Zucchetti

Cinematography Cinematography

Production design production design, stunts stunts, composer composer.

Max Richter

BBC Film Heyday Films Nordisk Film Denmark Lipsync Productions BFI Sony Pictures Classics Protagonist Pictures Ingenious Media Hotwells Productions

Denmark UK USA

Releases by Date

14 oct 2014, 09 apr 2015, 04 jun 2015, 23 sep 2015, 22 oct 2015, 23 oct 2015, 16 jan 2015, 02 dec 2015, 06 nov 2015, releases by country.

• Physical 14 BluRay/DVD Sony
• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 16

South Korea

• Theatrical 12
• Theatrical PG-13

129 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by davidehrlich ★★★ 1

SURRENDER TO THE YEAR OF THE VIKANDER

Review by cassie ★★★★ 1

thinking of getting a taron egerton neck tattoo please comment ideas

Review by sneh ★★★ 1

me to taron in this movie: nooo don't go to war you're so cute aha

Review by Ruslan Mavrodinov ★★★★½

Deeply intimate and assuredly pacifist, Testament of Youth is not just an arresting period drama about the horror and futility of war, but also a timely cinematic beacon for hope and humanism. Urgency, fragility and lyrical vibrancy thrive in Vikander’s nuanced and spellbinding career-high performance, which establishes her as one of the finest, most versatile actresses of her generation.

Review by mary🦋 ★★★★★ 1

*cough cough* I’m just gonna say it now *cough cough* wait for it... underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated underrated  (though the poster is dreadful af, not gonna lie)

Review by rebekah ★★★★

my brain: let's watch something light me: what about this depressing movie about the senselessness of war my brain: no... me: it's a period dra-- my brain: i'm in

Review by mulaney ★★★★ 1

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

poor kit harington always dyin & shit

Review by isaac ★★★½ 3

giving this movie a whole extra half star bc i made jokes about taron egerton's character being gay the whole time and GUESS WHAT BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Review by Holly-Beth ★★★★

don't be fooled by the poster folks, this film really goes a lot deeper into the issues surrounding the ethics of the first world war than i was expecting-- a real surprise!

alicia vikander is amazing as always, and carries the film effortlessly. i particularly loved the scenes between her and taron egerton (who plays her brother)-- a lot of the film's most powerful scenes, both happy and sad, are found in their moments together.

'testament of youth' made for a wonderful (albeit heartbreaking) double-bill with 'atonement'... a double-bill which i am never ever doing again!

Review by sara ★★★½

me? crying over alicia vikander and taron egerton playing siblings? absolutely

Review by Arianna ★★★½

My favourite thing about this film is how all the deaths are off-screen, just as they were in Vera's life: left to be imagined, re-constructed. A very painful film; I had to remind myself this wasn't gratuitous pain added in by some writer, but a real story - because it's too much, and then some. I loved also how near the end she closes herself off and sort of regards others from a pedestal - " I have endured more than you did, I have lived through more pain " - then has to realise how wrong that is.

My favorite scene might be the one where she helps Roland come back to himself on the beach - very intense. Alicia Vikander is, of course, excellent.

Review by iana ★★★½

it is a well known fact that kit harington is so beautiful it fuckin hurts

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Movie Review: 'Testament Of Youth'

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

The book "Testament Of Youth" was first published in England in 1933, and it's never gone out of print. It's by Vera Brittain, one of the few memoirs of World War I from a woman's point of view. Now it's been turned into a feature film, and our critic, Kenneth Turan, has this review.

KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: "Testament Of Youth" sweeps you away. It tells the kind of deeply involving story whose complexities can only come from a real life that's lived through them all. Key to the film's success is the all-out performance by Alicia Vikander, very much the actress of the moment following her charismatic work in "Ex Machina." She's thrown herself unreservedly into the role of Vera and pulled everyone else along with her. The year is 1914, and Vera's feminist spirit is visible almost immediately as she clashes with her parents over her dream of being a rare woman student at Oxford. Vera insists she never wants to marry anyone. Then, one of her brother's friends, handsome, sensitive Roland, played by Kit Harington of "Game Of Thrones," walks in the door. The connection between them is immediate. But this relationship is not going to be easy.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TESTAMENT OF YOUTH")

ALICIA VIKANDER: (As Vera Brittain) If it's friendship you want, that's fine with me. I prefer clarity, that's all.

KIT HARINGTON: (As Roland Leighton) Vera, let's agree, no more fear.

VIKANDER: (As Vera Brittain) No more fear.

TURAN: In the background of all this is the buildup to world war. Suddenly, everyone's lives get very serious very quickly. And one by one, all the young men in Vera's life volunteer for what they think will be a few months of military service. Here, she agrees to help her beloved brother get their father's permission to enlist.

TARON EGERTON: (As Edward Brittain) I need your help.

VIKANDER: (As Vera Brittain) Tell me.

EGERTON: (As Edward Brittain) I've been talking to father about signing up.

VIKANDER: (As Vera Brittain) Already?

EGERTON: (As Edward Brittain) This is what we trained for.

TURAN: What makes Vera Brittain's story so exceptional is the fluid way all the elements in her life - the passionate feminism, a love story, her terrifying work as a front-line nurse - naturally flow together. The "Testament Of Youth" we see is an exceptional romance. But it's a romance with a considerable amount on its mind, a romance with lessons for our time as much as for hers.

MONTAGNE: The movie is "Testament Of Youth." Kenneth Turan reviews movies for MORNING EDITION and the Los Angeles Times. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.