Testament of Youth
Vera Brittain’s famous memoir Testament of Youth opens with the following poignant line: “When
the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an
interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans.” What unfolds
over the next 600 pages is, despite its value as a document of a turbulent
period in 20th century history, first and foremost a very personal
story. It chronicles not just Vera’s own fate but that of her entire generation,
of the young men and women around her whose lives were shaped by world events
far beyond their control. Testament of
Youth was unique in being the only book written about WW1 by a woman, but
hers is not a sentimentalised account. As she was keen to emphasise: “I have
tried to write the exact truth as I saw and see it […], since a book of this
kind has no value unless it is honest.”
While Brittain’s book covers the period of her life from
1900-1925, the new film, released appropriately enough to coincide with the centenary
commemoration of World War One, spans just the four years of that conflict. The
opening scenes introduce us to a young Vera, growing up in provincial comfort
in the north of England. We see her arguing with her parents, railing at the
narrow expectations of class and gender to which she is expected to conform
(including demurely playing the piano at home until, presumably, it is deemed
time for her to marry). This is not the life Vera wants - she has set her
sights set on reading English at Oxford. When she wins an exhibition to
Somerville College it is up to her brother Ted (played by Taron Egerton) to plead her case with
their father, a favour she is to return later in the film when he in turn has
to beg his father for permission to sign up to fight. Vera then meets and falls in love with her
brother’s best friend, Roland Leighton (played by Kit Harrington). He too has
won a place at Oxford, but finds his plans immediately thwarted by the outbreak
of war. Vera, dismayed at his decision to sign up, enters Oxford on her own but
soon finds she has a deep-seated need to “do something”. That something turns
out to be nursing, a job for which she openly admits to being (at first,
anyway) temperamentally unsuited. With characteristic energy and determination,
she knuckles down and is soon exposed to the horrors of war. Roland comes home
on his first leave already numbed and traumatised by what he has witnessed. In
an attempt to get him to open up to her, Vera asks Roland: “Have you written
any poems?” The words ring hollow, pointing up as they do the stark contrast
between the calm, settled existence they have both known and the horror of the
conflict into which they have been plunged. By the end of this scene Roland has
proposed to Vera. He promises they will marry on his next leave at Christmas
and tries to reassure her by saying that his being posted to headquarters
rather than the front line will mean he is safe. Sadly, as preparations for the
wedding get underway, news comes that Roland has been killed. In a desperate
attempt to find out exactly what happened to him, Vera visits his friend
Geoffrey. He (eventually) tells her the messy truth of her fiancé’s
death. She decides to go to France to be near her brother Edward and starts
work at the military hospital in Etaples where she nurses soldiers hideously
wounded on the front line, including Germans. Edward, too, is seriously wounded
but then recovers sufficiently to be sent to fight in Italy. On his departure,
he makes his sister promise to return to her studies at Oxford. This does not
happen immediately as Vera is summoned home to sort out what is described by
her father as a “domestic crisis”, i.e. she is to minister to her hysterical,
overwrought mother. While at home, news comes in June 1918 of Edward’s death in
Italy. Following the armistice, Vera takes up her place at Oxford, where she
meets Winifred Holtby who was to become a lifelong friend. One of the final
scenes of the film shows Vera’s first meeting with the political scientist George
Catlin whom she went on to marry in 1925. As the film closes, we see Vera
making her views felt at a political rally and get a sense of the direction her
life is to take. Brittain went on to become a prolific speaker, journalist and
lecturer, devoting herself to the twin causes of pacifism (even as late as the
1970s she was demonstrating with CND) and feminism.
All in all, I thought this was an excellent film and that Alicia
Vikander played Vera with just the right mix of vulnerability and grit. Vera’s
daughter, Shirley Williams said she was anxious that her mother should not be
portrayed as merely a romantic heroine, but as someone who had real political
conviction and was always passionate in her support of the pacifist cause. I
think the film succeeds in doing that and I felt that anyone watching the film
without having ever read Brittain’s memoir, would still get some sense of what
Vera was like and what she stood for. Despite the obvious potential for sinking
into melodrama, the film manages to avoid it and the poignancy of Vera’s story
is never lost. The film is also beautifully shot and has some effective
cinematic moments, such as the crane shot sweeping over the ranks of the dying
at Etaples towards the end – very moving. Testament
of Youth certainly pulls no punches in its unvarnished portrayal of the suffering
caused by the Great War. Watching the film, as one critic put it, is like being
“pummelled by sadness”. Yes, this is a sad story but it is also a story of
courage, conviction and is, strangely, extremely life-affirming.
