Vera Brittain’s 1933 source text may be one of the key works of 20th-century English literature (an authentic feminist voice amid a cacophony of male war novelists and poets), but James Kent’s handsomely well-behaved film has the air of a footnote about it. Certainly the true-life story of this independent young woman abandoning her hard-earned Oxford studies to tend to the wounded and dying (both British and German) during the first world war is invigorating and inspiring. The mercurial Swedish actor Alicia Vikander overcomes an only slightly wobbly accent (in a role originally earmarked for Saoirse Ronan) to hold her own against a barrage of all-too familiar elements: the prewar romance; the Brief Encounter parting; the derailed family celebrations, etc.
The entire ensemble cast work hard to inject personal passion into the stiff-upper-lip storytelling, and individual moments are haunting: Vera speaking sympathetic German to a dying combatant who, hours before, was shooting at her nearest and dearest; Dominic West’s stoical father privately weeping in a very public place. It’s a powerful story, and one that deserves to be told and retold, albeit in rather more adventurous fashion.
