While scouring HBO, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, etc., for those rare items that are both intelligent and not set in the here and now, I came across “Testament of Youth.” It is a beautiful but disturbing period piece about World War I, based on the memoir by Vera Brittain, which was published in 1940.
Brittain’s dream was to go to Oxford. That dream came true, but the war fell hard — very hard — on her generation. After the war she became a pacifist activist.
As much as I wanted to read Testament of Youth, after looking at samples on Amazon I decided not to. Unfortunately she was not an appealing writer.
But, regardless of her style of writing, Brittain’s is a story that deserves to be told and to be remembered. The film, with a fine cast, does a very good job of that. Anglophiles will find much in the film to interest them.
“Testament of Youth” can be streamed from Amazon Prime Video.
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Hi David – Summer of Rockets was a good BBC series I saw recently, set in the 1950s, I believe it is available on Netflix.
Hi Chenda: Thank you! Unfortunately I can’t seem to find Summer of Rockets on Netflix or any American streaming service that I subscribe to. But I will keep looking!
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