Interview: Testament of Youth director James Kent discusses his Vera Brittain biopic

 

Vera Brittain is a role model for young people who want to get their beliefs heard by the world. Her example encourages us to stick to what we believe in and override the obstacles that life throws at us. That’s a brilliant message on this 100th anniversary of World War One. 

 

 

She is Brittain’s only surviving child. She i­­s also an important politician in her own right and has inherited a lot of Brittain’s opinions. I think there’s a lot of Vera in Shirley. We had to get her consent but also we wanted her to come on the road with us. Thankfully she loved the film. She read the script and came on the shoot and met the actors… she gave Alicia Vikander insights into her mother so she was very important. 

 

 

 

She’s going to be huge – the next Natalie Portman – and she’s got bigger films than ours coming up. This is her first major English language lead and she is extraordinary in the role. She has enormous emotional reservoirs. She is massively cinematic. She could have been a silent movie star.

 

 

Because she’s a ballet dancer she’s very serious about doing her homework. She listened to Radio 4 a lot. No one seems to have mentioned it was a problem that we got a Scandinavian actress and it was important we went for the best actress for the part.

 

 

Fortunately, the producer of the film shared my view of the world and she felt I’d be the right director for the project. It was difficult to convince some people because £7m is a big budget for a debut director. But in the end the BBC, Lionsgate and the BFI listened to the producers, listened to the pitch and went with the decision, so the film happened because my view of the world mirrored what the producers wanted. 

 

 

She would be really angry and depressed. She was anti-conflict but she was particularly anti people being ignorant about what conflict might mean and sliding into war without really understanding what war might mean. The 2003 Iraq war for example, the consequences of that, the human scale of loss. She would have been angry.