Alicia Vikander plays Vera Brittain in this film version of Miss Brittain's memoirs of the First World War.
I was not terribly impressed. First off, there is the visual theft from every war movie, from the dead trees on the battlefield to the crane shot of the wounded lying on the ground. The principal issue I have with this movie is with Miss Vikander, who goes through it with an expression of sullen resentment: for her father, Dominic West, for having wanted a son; for her mother, Emily Watson, who finds the civilian side of the war too much to bear; for the people who insist she not go anywhere without a chaperone, for the War interfering with her life, and so forth. Perhaps this was an acting choice that she and her director, James Kent, settled on, but I find it unengaging.
I was not terribly impressed. First off, there is the visual theft from every war movie, from the dead trees on the battlefield to the crane shot of the wounded lying on the ground. The principal issue I have with this movie is with Miss Vikander, who goes through it with an expression of sullen resentment: for her father, Dominic West, for having wanted a son; for her mother, Emily Watson, who finds the civilian side of the war too much to bear; for the people who insist she not go anywhere without a chaperone, for the War interfering with her life, and so forth. Perhaps this was an acting choice that she and her director, James Kent, settled on, but I find it unengaging.