| My rating | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critics | Audience | Critics | Audience | |
| 8.5/10 | 77/100 | 7.3/10 | 82% | 79% |
As I’ve already mentioned in this blog, when I wrote about Far From the Madding Crowd, I really enjoy period movies, especially British. And Testament of Youth is another one to be added to my list.
Based on the autobiography of Vera Brittain (played by Alicia Vikander), it tells the story of a young woman whose biggest dream is to go to Oxford and becoming a writer, despite the fact that women didn’t go to university that frequently back then. However, her life changes drastically when World War I starts and she sees her brother Edward (Taron Egerton), her friend Victor (Colin Morgan) and her love interest Roland Leighton (Kit Harington, a.k.a. Jon Snow, from Game of Thrones) going to war.
We witness her life transforming before our eyes and we notice how her interests also change, since she refuses to stay in school and just keep studying while there was a war happening so close to her. It’s interesting to see the choices she’s forced to make and how that probably happened to so many girls at the same time.
The movie has a lovely soundtrack and the costumes, especially Vera’s clothes and hats, are equally beautiful. I also enjoy the entire cast and I think Alicia Vikander did a wonderful job capturing all the conflicts and dilemmas Vera was facing. One of my favorites scenes in the film is when everyone is celebrating the end of the war and we see her in the crowd, completely devastated and wandering around without knowing where to go (this scene is shown twice in the movie).
It’s clearly not a box-office hit, especially this time of year, when dinosaurs seem to be the world’s favorite thing to watch, but it’s a beautiful and delicate movie and should be watched by everyone.
