Testament of Youth: cinema trip

Today, Miss Foster and the English department took us to a screening of James Kent's 'Testament of Youth'. It is the film adaptation of Vera Brittain's memoir detailing her war experience and losses during the first world war, as originally published in 1933. Here is the trailer:



The lead role was played by the wonderful Alicia Vikander, a flourishing Swedish actress with 8 upcoming films this year which I am thoroughly looking forward to.

The film was useful not only as an English Literature student, studying the literature of World War 1, but also as a Media Studies student. Me and Tayla were pinching each other throughout because of how beautifully it was shot!

We really liked the use of selective focus, especially in close ups of single characters as we thought it really emphasized the emotion and individual suffering of each character; this also made us consider the subject of war as a whole and that the idea that each member of an entire generation was impacted in some way or another.






We also liked the use of match cutting in the film - one in particular which stood out to us was the scene where Vera's tears fell, which followed into the raindrops in the trenches where her loved ones were, as it was particularly poignant.






 Here is a critical response to the film:

Testament of Youth: critics review

Although the critic argues that 'there seems no real thunderstorm', after watching the film through wet eyes, I disagree as the film did little to romanticize the war and still made the audience emotional - perhaps it was more appropriate to leave out the horrors on the Front line as it was central to Vera Brittain who did not fight in the trenches.

Here are some of the scenes which stuck out to us, in exposing the brutality of war:



Overall, Testament of Youth was a brilliant film which I'd definitely recommend.
Although it does not fall under the same genre as our two minute opening, we took inspiration from how it was shot especially in terms of framing, composition and sound which made each scene all the more effective.