Movie Review: 'Testament of Youth'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Toward the end of Testament of Youth, the central character delivers a speech that, taken out of context, would usually be considered flatfooted "speechifying" and would land with a thud.
But this earnest British period drama makes such an eloquent case leading up to that moment that the words overwhelm us with their wisdom and power.
It's a passionate lament about the futility of war, it plays at the time as if it's the anti-war speech, and it eloquently mourns the unnecessary loss of human life that war inevitably leads to.
Testament of Youth is a World War I drama based on the heartbreaking memoir by feminist and pacifist Vera Brittain (that was the basis for a 1979 BBC TV series) and was scripted by Juliette Towhidi.
It begins on Armistice Day in 1918, the day that the devastating conflict came to a grateful end.
Alicia Vikander, who made such a strong impression as the fetching android in Ex Machina earlier this year, plays Vera, who seems to be the only person we see not visibly ecstatic about the war's finish.
As the film flashes back to the spring of 1914 to begin her story, we come to realize that what came to be called The Great War has just taken too much away from her for her to do anything even resembling celebrating.
Prior to the war, Vera is an aspiring writer who wishes to defy convention and attend Oxford University at a time when women are discouraged from putting their energy into learning, which is the way her parents (Emily Watson and Dominic West) feel.
And we come to know the men in her life just as their youth is about to be stolen from them: her cherished brother Edward (Taron Egerton); his close friend Victor (Colin Morgan), who it's plain to see has developed an unrequited crush on her; and a fellow writer, Roland (Kit Harington), with whom Vera falls in love and plans to marry, but who will return home afflicted with what will come to be known in a later era as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Vera follows the three men to Oxford, but the war interrupts their studies and all three men enlist. Wanting to be part of the war effort, Vera leaves school and becomes a nurse, tending to wounded and dying soldiers in France as she and her loved ones become acquainted firsthand with the horrors of armed conflict.
Debuting director James Kent, whose background is in television, doesn't spare us the brutality and devastation of warfare, which is the appropriate approach, although he does let things go on somewhat longer than they should.
But he makes sure to have the casualties we witness work on us just as they affect Vera, who seems to be losing everyone and everything around her.
In the movie, as was the case for those who lived through it or died trying, upbeat or even casually pleasurable moments are few and far between.
Swedish actress Vikander, certainly a rising star, keeps Vera's steely determination front and center as she holds the camera beautifully, taking us on the journey with her without much fuss. And she's ably supported by the rest of the fine cast.
So we'll enlist 3 stars out of 4 for Testament of Youth, a well-crafted, grief-drenched drama about the true cost of war.
