Articles

The huge intelligent autobiography by Vera Brittain, based on her experiences in the First World War, has been much tamed and reduced in this filmic version by director James Kent. With plenty of scenes focusing on nothing much more than Alicia Vikander’s undoubted beauty and good taste in knitwear. It needs more substance and bite. The best scene? When Brittain, volunteering as a nursing orderly behind the lines in France, is confronted by row upon row of stretchers bearing the dead and dying from the battlefields. Would have been better as a 3 part TV series.