‘Testament of Youth’: Women at War
Cinema may forever be reminding us that war is hell but rarely does it offer us female experiences of that hell. “Testament of Youth,” a sweeping adaptation of Vera Brittain’s memoir of World War I, goes a long way toward correcting that inequity, even if its Masterpiece Theater sensibilities don’t quite measure up to the sparkling acuity of its source material.
The film opens on Armistice Day, 1918, as Vera (Alicia Vikander), drawn and bleak, staggers among the celebrating throngs. Flashback four years, when she’s a bourgeoisie bluestocking angling to attend university against the wishes of her regressive parents (Emily Watson and Dominic West; wherefore art thou, McCuddy?), and playing one of the boys with her brother, sensitive musician Edward (Taron Egerton), and his school chums Roland (Kit Harington, showing 100 percent more range than he does in “Game of Thrones”) and Victor (Colin Morgan). With his brooding good looks, realms of poetry, and suffragette mommy, Roland’s got the makings of more of a pal, and the first bit of this story dwells on their burgeoning romance as she makes her arduous way through Oxford’s gates. It all changes just before she begins her studies, when Britain declares war on Germany, and a concern that has only faintly shadowed Brittain’s upper-class life becomes critical. All three boys enlist, and Vera finds the collegiate life she’d craved so trivial that she enrolls as a military nurse, working domestically and then on the French frontlines as she grapples with tragedy after tragedy. Continue Reading →
Together, Alone: Movies on Message
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival, that cinematic arm of the New York-based research and advocacy program, has always boasted selections that are worth watching purely for aesthetic reasons. It’s impossible to do so, though. Each of these films examines the limits of human behavior with a radical compassion that confronts the failings of the world that we all share nowadays, regardless of whether we care to admit it.
It is a truism of modern life that the more accessible everything is, the more isolated we each become. Technology affords us the ability to visit with each other, order our supplies and entertainment, and do our work without ever venturing outside our homes. We are more globalized than ever before in the history of humankind; we can view lands, people, and events that are 6,000 miles away as if they’re in our backyard. Yet there’s no replacing firsthand experience. I learned that during Hurricane Sandy. While we New Yorkers were stripped of heat, running water, and electricity, friends as close by as Boston and Pennsylvania prattled on to us about cute puppies and bad hair days. To them, our hardship was not real. I didn’t blame them. Although we enjoyed the illusion of intimacy afforded by social media and smartphone technology (at least when we New Yorkers managed to charge our phones), it was nonetheless difficult for outsiders to grasp our dire straits, even when they were only a couple hundred miles away. Continue Reading →
