Alicia Vikander is in pretty much every scene of this film. She does well, as do most of the other actors. It's not their fault that this adaptation of a British classic book about the First World War is mess.
The screenplay scampers through the years, so most of the dialogue ends up being clunkily expository. When relationships or landscapes are dwelt upon, the tone is either hyper-romantic (swirling music from Max Richter) or hyper-subjective (DOP Rob Hardy and his hand-held camera). Relationships are diminished, events are melodramatised, the performances are undermined. What should be moving ends up as mawkish. A travesty.
Track down the BBC serialisation from 1979, with the wonderful Cheryl Campbell as Vera Brittain, to see how much better this could have been done.
The screenplay scampers through the years, so most of the dialogue ends up being clunkily expository. When relationships or landscapes are dwelt upon, the tone is either hyper-romantic (swirling music from Max Richter) or hyper-subjective (DOP Rob Hardy and his hand-held camera). Relationships are diminished, events are melodramatised, the performances are undermined. What should be moving ends up as mawkish. A travesty.
Track down the BBC serialisation from 1979, with the wonderful Cheryl Campbell as Vera Brittain, to see how much better this could have been done.