“War,”
Edwin Starr famously wondered, “What is it good for?”
I’ll tell you what it’s good for:
War inspires art. Obviously, no one sane hankers for it, but without war our
culture wouldn’t have Picasso’s “Guernica,” Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell
Tolls,” Springsteen’s “Lost in the Flood,” Altman’s “M*A*S*H” — I could totally
cram this entire space with war-begat titles from every medium. Art is often
derived from conflict, and the only motif offering more conflict than humans
ordered to slaughter one another is the inner turmoil duking it out in both
those who fight and those left behind.
Rare, though, is the female
perspective, which is undoubtedly why English writer Vera Brittain’s
reminiscences on World War I, first published in 1933, have never gone out of
print and now make for the gorgeously crafted, resonant coming-of-age film “Testament
of Youth.”
Presumably a few were agitated at
the casting of a Swedish actress as a famous English rose, but Alicia Vikander
follows up her knockout “Ex Machina” restraint with
another stunning turn, this one requiring her to hit a challenging spectrum of
emotional beats. Vikander plays Vera, who we first encounter on Armistice Day,
1918, as she weaves her sad, haunted way through a crush of London revelers
celebrating the end of The Great War. But we’re quickly flashed back four years
to witness the same young woman happily bobbing in an idyllic Derbyshire
swimming hole, only to return home and rage against her well-to-do father
(Dominic West, impressive in his few scenes) for buying her a husband-snagging
piano rather than funding the Oxford education of which this aspiring writer
dreams.
It’s not ruining anything to say
that the smart and determined Vera eventually gets her way, even in the face of
the educational constraints felt by women a mere hundred years ago. And despite
her anti-marriage stance, Vera cautiously falls for her brother Edward’s poet
friend Roland Leighton (dreamy Kit Harington, “Game of Thrones”), their
chaperoned excursions chaste yet delicately erotic.
Then an archduke is assassinated in
Sarajevo and the world is plunged into what would shake out as one of history’s
deadliest conflicts, with millions of young men, including Edward and Roland,
impelled to volunteer for service in the names of honor and duty.
Unsurprisingly, our headstrong heroine also joins the war effort as a nurse,
but not before butting heads with a steely professor (the formidable Miranda
Richardson) who believes that Vera should remain at school and work even harder.
The added weight of war through
Vera’s eyes gives “Testament of Youth” a profound gravity as she cares for
enemy combatants not so different from her own loved ones on the battlefield,
while simultaneously enduring an unfathomable parade of loss. Cinematographer
Rob Hardy (he also shot “Ex Machina” and the first
chapter of the stellar “Red Riding” trilogy) effectively juxtaposes the bloody,
muddy hospital environment against the inoffensively drab greys of academia and
the verdant English countryside, the differing textures somehow popping off the
screen as well. And though train-platform farewells and pullback shots of
devastation have been done before, director James Kent refrains from relying
upon the superficial potency of battle scenes, trusting instead that the
aftermath, when all the adrenaline has dissipated, is equally visceral, the
reactions of those not at the front mirroring our own.
The acting here is excellent across
the board, with Harington nicely throwing off the shackles of that dull downer
Jon Snow, and Taron Egerton making an indelible impression as Vera’s supportive
brother Edward. (The always awesome Emily Watson plays Vera’s clucking mother.)
But it’s worth remembering that “Testament of Youth” is Vera’s memoir — the
first part of a trilogy recounting Vera’s life — meaning that we can only
experience what she experienced. As such, Vikander is in every scene of the
movie, and her gracefully tempestuous performance is nothing short of
Oscar-worthy, her accent perfectly clipped and her dainty doll face registering
a storm of emotions before she utters a word. The final scene hints at Vera’s future
as an outspoken pacifist: her teary, defiant plea to “end the cycle of revenge”
as applicable now as it was then.
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2015.
