Testament of Youth (2014) was directed by James Kent. It's a dramatic film based on the autobiography of the noted English pacifist, Vera Brittain.

Alicia Vikander plays Vera Brittain, who in pre-WW I England, is barely allowed by her family to think for herself. She wants to go to Oxford and become a writer. Neither of these options is welcomed by her family. She persists, and does, indeed, get accepted at Oxford. However, all this debate and discussion about her future becomes basically irrelevant when World War I breaks out. Her brother, her fiancé, and their good friend all join the army. Vera becomes a nurse, first in England and then at the front.

There aren't too many battle scenes. Instead--and in a way, worse--we get scenes of the carnage that follows the battles. When Vera is at the front, the scenes at the aid stations are graphic and horrible to watch.

Another reviewer pointed out the similarity of one of the scenes to a scene in "Gone with the Wind." I noticed this too. In both movies, the camera pulls back to show us a huge field of wounded shoulders on stretchers, with just a few nurses moving among them trying to lessen their suffering.

It's easy to understand why Vera Brittain was changed forever by her experiences as a nurse. So, in a technical sense, this is a coming-of-age movie. However, it's much more than that. Vera's coming of age meant that she understood the basic futility of the killing and maiming. Working with the wounded and the dying at the battlefront wasn't something that she was able to forget and put behind her. The war changed her into the peace activist that she became and remained.

Alicia Vikander is a superb actor. This isn't her first film, but I was unaware of her work until I saw Testament of Youth. An earlier reviewer found her appearance too waif-like. In my opinion, she wasn't waif-like, but she had an astonishingly delicate Pre-Raphaelite beauty. My thought is that this works in the context of the movie. She may have looked delicate and incapable of any difficult, terrible work, but, when the time came, she rose to the challenge.

We saw this film at the excellent Little Theatre in Rochester, NY. It will work better on the large screen, because of the gorgeous scenery we see in England. (Obviously, there wasn't much beauty left in the scenery of war-torn France or Belgium.) Still, this is a film worth seeking out. If it's no longer playing in theaters, see it on the small screen. It's an challenging, important movie. Don't miss it.