More than 80 years after its first publication, Vera Brittain’s TESTAMENT OF YOUTH forms an integral part of the way we view the British experience of the First World War.

It’s not remotely different from the Australian experience of that stoush and as we commemorate the centenary of the Gallipoli offensive, the release of a big screen adaptation of TESTAMENT OF YOUTH is timely and redolent.

Vera Brittains’s interest in fashion illuminates character, time and place under the consummate eye of costume designer, Consolata Boyle, the Oscar nominated wardrobe wiz of The Queen.

Creating a complete world that is visually coherent, the costumes range from fitted coats and berets to heavily starched cotton aprons with the Red Cross badge of the VAD uniform.

Juliette Towhidi, possibly best known for her screenplay of Calender Girls, not only delivers an intensified version of the book, but an intensified version of what we all go through in the course of our lives; the devastating loss of people close to us and the need for us to rebuild our lives without them.

The film begins with Vera Brittain wading her way through the jubilant mass of celebrating crowds on November 11, 1918. For her, the cost of the celebrations were as crushing as the crowd, the enormous loss of human life generally, and her personal loss of four young men killed in the war: her fiancée Roland Leighton, two close friends, Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, and finally, her beloved only brother, Edward.

Flashback to the golden afternoon of pre-war 1914 mere weeks before the winter of World War One cast the long, bleak shadow of four forsaken years.

Vera has secured a place at Oxford, and her brother, Edward and two of his mates, Roland and Victor, enjoy a summer idyll sadly unsurpassed. The kindling of romance is set between Vera and Roland, but the boys’ enlistment into the armed services cancels nuptials whilst they are posted abroad.

Postponing her tertiary education, she puts as her primary focus her work as volunteer aid detachment nurse, first in London and later in Malta and France. As her loved ones are lost, she embarks on a Saving Private Ryan type mission to rescue the last remaining person of her immediate and intimate circle.

Vera is played by the young Swedish actress, Alicia Vikander, who was so luminous as the English princess married to the insane Danish king in A Royal Affair. Here she is compelling as the single minded, intelligent woman who must try make sense of the complete insanity engulfing her.

Kit Harrington plays Roland, who manages to convey a mixture of brooding pride and poetic romance.

A magnificent ensemble cast of supportive actors has been assembled to give great depth and texture to this production.

Dominic West and Emily Watson play Vera’s parents in a finely embroidered tapestry of family bewilderment and grief as their progeny is decimated, devastated and the security of their domesticity destroyed.

Miranda Richardson stars as the steely Oxford suffragette who intuits Vera’s talent and potential for academic life, Joanna Scanlan is the warm aunty chaperone sympathetic to her niece’s nuances, The ever reliable Anna Chancellor plays Roland’s mother, and Hayley Atwell is a no nonsense nurse inured to the death and injury of the battlefield.

Beautifully photographed by Rob Hardy, who recently shot Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman, the lush, verdant landscapes of Northern England give sumptuous contrast to the mud, blood and guts of the western front.

Veteran TV director but first time feature film helmer James Kent gives the film an extreme first person singular viewpoint reflecting the autobiographical voice. Camera movement and composition often represents Vera’s point of view.

TESTAMENT OF YOUTH is a testament not only to the immense talents on all who worked on the film but a testament to the enduring power of its source material.

Lest We Forget.