Testament of Youth 2014

Kyle Smith, New York Post: The film is elegantly done, mainly because it wisely expends most of its energy on Alicia Vikander's face. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: The book is still is in print to this day, selling like crumpets at high tea. The movie is a proud collation of its reflected glory. Don't miss it. Read more

Guy Lodge, Variety: Kent presents the female experience of war with crisp, tactile practicality ... Unabashedly romantic the film may be, but little about Brittain's grief-ridden personal awakening is needlessly romanticized. Read more

Keith Uhlich, AV Club: There's a good movie in Brittain's story, but you wouldn't know it from this lethargic, BBC-produced bore. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: This is World War I from a woman's point of view, a different perspective than we usually see. It's the story of someone who doesn't fight ... but for whom the horrors of war are just as vivid and devastating. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Vera Brittain's celebrated memoir of the British home front in World War I gets a polished Masterpiece Theatre treatment that fails to diminish the story's wrenching emotional content. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: As Vera, the rebellious, moneyed young woman whose dream of graduating from Oxford is deferred when the war breaks out, Alicia Vikander is such a ferociously intuitive performer that you can't take your eyes off her. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Somehow, Vikander sells it all, not with braying and big gestures, but with vulnerability, sincerity and the sort of ethereal realness that can't be quantified. More, please, more. Read more

Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly: We don't need movies to tell us war is hell. But at their best, they humanize its unfathomable losses in a way that history books never quite can. Read more

Leslie Felperin, Hollywood Reporter: Striking an elegantly sustained balance between intimacy and historical scope, director James Kent's WWI-set epic Testament of Youth encompasses nearly all of the virtues of classical British period drama and nearly none of the vices. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: From first to last, "Testament of Youth" sweeps you away. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: Testament of Youth isn't a typical biopic; it's a heartfelt manual on forging ahead. Read more

Elaine Teng, The New Republic: Just once, it would be refreshing to see Britain look like something other than a country-living catalogue. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: Vikander crisply holds the screen as a naive rebel transformed by unspeakable suffering into a mature, independent young woman who remains open to the possibility of a new love and a rebuilt England. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, New York Daily News: [D]elivers one rich and emotional scene after another Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Evokes the march of history with a balance and restraint exhibited by few movies with such grand ambitions. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Vikander and Harington provide the spark this World War I epic needs to get us through the tribulations and tragedies that pile on with numbing regularity. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Though the movie at times feels oddly unfinished (you wonder what Miranda Richardson, in a tiny role as an Oxford professor, is there for), it's artful and moving. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: In World War I, a generation learned that war was not the answer. In World War II, another generation learned that pacifism was not the answer. It would seem that there just isn't an answer. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: As a story, it evokes a word that no battlefield nurse would ever apply to her experiences: sterile. Read more

Nathalie Atkinson, Globe and Mail: In what is a well-acted but fairly typical prestige period drama, it's Vikander's nuanced performance as the resolute but still-vulnerable Vera who gives the film its depth. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: This is Vikander's film and she is very good here. Read more

Inkoo Kang, TheWrap: The World War I-set "Testament of Youth" makes a passionate and sensible case for [pacifism] through devastating, melancholy, persevering drama. Read more

Cath Clarke, Time Out: A beautifully acted but disappointingly stiff period drama. Read more

Marsha McCreadie, Village Voice: Without the epic sweep of a Doctor Zhivago, it's an intellectual and emotional landscape Vera traverses: grief to survival and, finally, pacifism. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Mournful, very fine ... Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: [Vikander's] performance is a subtle tour de force of feeling and restraint, made all the more remarkable by the whiplash highs and lows of this true but melodramatic tale. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Tough-minded and sometimes harrowing. Read more