Movie Style: Testament of Youth

I'm reading Vera Brittain's memoir Testament of Youth at the moment.  It's a beautiful, poignant account of life and love during World War I, and Brittain, a feminist and peace activist, offers an honest perspective on how the war changed the youth of her generation.  No longer were they focused on academics or leisure but on survival.  

“There seemed to be nothing left in the world, for I felt that Roland had taken with him all my future and Edward all my past.”

Last year, a film adaptation of Testament of Youth came out, and my mum and I, always drawn to the tragic beauty of war poets like Wilfred Owen, watched it together.  The scenes of the trenches recreated the horrific reality of the war, and the film captured well the novel and the transition that the youth went through from being completely disconnected from war to being fully involved in it.  But while so much of the movie brought out the pain and horrors of the WWI era, the costumes designed by Consolata Boyle reflected (like the poetry) the beauty that so many clung onto during the darkness.










<3 Frances