25-31 December 2015 #788

Testament of Youth

A timeless, poignant reminder that life can be both hideously unfair, as well as transcendentally sublime
Sophia Pande

Vera Brittain’s memoir of the First World War became the voice of a generation – the generation that lost so much in the war that changed the modern world. Today, all of the truths from Brittain’s epoch-making work are taken in good faith as part of an important history.

So why make a film in 2015 about events that took place a century ago? The reason for the remaking of Testament of Youth (it was made into a five part BBC serial in 1979) is still a bit unclear to me, even though I enjoyed the film and continue to feel the weightiness of the subject matter so many years later.

Perhaps this particular film is receiving so much attention because of the presence of one of the year’s most exciting young faces, the Swedish Alicia Vikander (who plays Vera Brittain), a trained actor and dancer who has also starred in some of the past year’s more interesting films (Guy Ritchie’s latest highly enjoyable romp The Man From U.N.C.L.E is one of them). Brittain is joined by Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, and Colin Morgan, a trio of talented British actors, who play Brittain’s fiancé Roland Leighton, her brother Edward Brittain, and her friend Victor Richardson respectively.

Supported by this strong ensemble cast – Testament of Youth already bolstered by very high production values (essential in a period film), is a deeply tragic tale of immense, senseless loss. It is also the story of a young woman’s struggle for equal opportunities, a commentary on social class in England, and finally a horrifying reminder of the naïveté that initially accompanied Britain’s entry into the war in 1914 – a war, as pointed out earlier that changed the world as it was at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Perhaps some stories need to be retold every so often to remind us of the horrors of war, and also to acknowledge the fact that even a 100 years after Brittain’s struggle to go to Oxford University (where women were allowed to read, but still not awarded degrees), we still do not (contrary to mainstream opinion) live in a post-feminist world. Equal rights still need to be a part of the dialogue, whether you are in Nepal or in England, and women still very much struggle against an entrenched patriarchy that chooses to nonchalantly dismiss issues such as equal pay, sexual harassment, reproductive rights, and abuse – a case in point is our gender biased citizenship provisions. Vera Brittain struggles to express herself, fight for her rights, and to live with her losses. Her story is a timeless, poignant reminder that life can be both hideously unfair, as well as transcendentally sublime.