Feature | Lights, Camera, Action! – Testament of Youth (Movie Review) Page 1

Feature | Lights, Camera, Action! – Testament of Youth (Movie Review)

Testament of Youth (UK Rating: 12A)

The British film industry's flag has been flying high over the past week, with the announcement of the BAFTA nominations and the success of films like The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything. Mike Leigh's critically acclaimed Mr. Turner fared less well, but another British film, which on the outside seemed to have all the right ingredients, completely failed to register. Testament of Youth, based on the 1st World War memoirs of Vera Brittain, was left out in the cold.

With Testament of Youth due to open around the UK on Friday, 16th January, Lights, Camera, Action! delivers the only verdict that matters.

The story is a famous one: Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) was raised in middle class comfort in rural Derbyshire, but nursed a desire to study at Oxford. Despite opposition from her family, she gets there but her arrival coincides with the start of World War I. As she starts her academic career, she also has to see her brother, his best friend, and the - hitherto - love of her life all take the King's Shilling and go off to fight. During the course of the war, she loses all three of them and, in just her early 20s, is left on her own to find her place in the world.

It's a coming of age story that has echoed down the decades, giving a voice to the tens of thousands who went through similar experiences both then and in future conflicts. However, it wasn't just a voice, more a howl of anguish at a time when emotional restraint was the order of the day, and it's that restraint that director James Kent has reproduced faithfully in the tone of this first big screen version of the book. It doesn't always work to the film's advantage, though.

On the plus side, it means that when emotion does break out of the constraints of the time, it has real impact. The moment when Vera's father (Dominic West) learns his son has been killed is gut-wrenching, and her own passionate speech towards the end of the film, which carries the film's message, brings a lump to the throat. The downside is that bottling up emotions to this extent gives the actors a real uphill task and, rising talent though she may be, Alicia Vikander's Vera buries hers so deep that there's hardly anything to read on her face. Kit Harington as Roland, the man she loves, ends up looking more sulky than sultry and this contributes to the film's biggest failing.

The relationship between Vera and Roland lies at the heart of the movie and is crucial to its success. The restrained attitudes of the time mean that the couple never do more than kiss, and this should have produced a deliciously unbearable intensity between the two… but it doesn't. The crucial spark between the two actors simply isn't there: they may look beautiful, but somehow their hearts don't seem to be truly in it. This doesn't just undermine Vera's grief when the worst happens, but also leaves an emotional gap exactly where the film should be full of fire.

Visually, the film is as appealing as its two leading players. There's one especially striking image of the field of casualties at Etaples, where Vera serves as a nurse. The aerial camera pans back to reveal row upon row of dead and dying on stretchers in the mud, punctuated with white dot nurses struggling to give them some comfort. It's beautifully moving.

7/10

Very Good - Bronze Award

Testament of Youth is a faithful and respectful adaptation of one of the most famous works to come out of the 1st World War. Overall, it has power and conviction, but the lack of intensity in the central relationship means there's a disappointing hollowness at its core.