“This part of you,” Vera tells soldier fiancée Roland with her hand on his heart, “don’t destroy it”.

“It might be gone already,” he replies.

In Testament of Youth, the emotional turmoil of war is as raw and resonant as the enormous physical destruction.

Based on Vera Brittain’s bestselling memoir of the same name from 1933, it is a timely, fresh reminder of a conflict that had such a huge affect on so many people.

Testament of Youth begins in 1914 with a headstrong young Vera (Alicia Vikander) insisting to her father that – against the contemporary social norms - she must go to university at Oxford like her brother Edward (Taron Egerton) and his chums Victor (Colin Morgan) and Roland (Kit Harington).

Vera gets her way, goes to Oxford, and falls in love with Roland. And then all hell breaks loose in Europe.

The men go off to fight and Vera feels it her duty to do her bit, even if it means giving up her golden opportunity at Oxford, and enlists as a nurse.

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Vera endures as those closest to her are destroyed mentally and physically by the war and in 1918 returns to Oxford, forever changed but with her powerful sense of compassion crucially undimmed.

True tales of heroism from the Great War are not especially rare yet this film is far from superfluous.

In part, that’s because it’s timely – a century on, it feels right to remember the tremendous sacrifices made on all sides – but also because it succeeds in bringing a female perspective forward.

And that’s not to mention the impressive performances from an A-grade cast, which includes Greenwich’s Emily Watson and Dominic West as Vera’s parents.

Alicia Vikander gives a necessarily transfixing performance as Vera. The 26-year-old Swedish actress brings to life an intelligent, brave and bold woman with sensitivity and nuance.

The film is improved by a refusal to flatten Vera into a straightforward heroine. She is imperfect – stubborn, judgemental and apparently unaware of her own privilege (she may have had to fight but at least the doors to Oxford were open to her, while a crisis in the Brittain household was having less than perfect staff).

While the movie is not especially innovative, director James Kent does strike a good balance; plenty of emotional heft without descending into wallowy melodrama.

Watching Roland depart from Charing Cross, bound for France, is full of foreboding while the next time we see him, on leave, is equally as emotive.

He puts on a brave face with his mates but in the gaps it is clear the war is tearing him apart.

One of the film’s triumphs is marrying the personal experience and heartbreak and marrying it to the enormous scale of the First World War which in a way which magnifies rather than lessens its significance.

The papers are filled daily with pages of names of the war dead and the makeshift hospitals are overflowing with wounded, and every one of them – German or British – is a tragedy, the film shows us.

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Film audiences are used to seeing gore and violence and perhaps the most harrowing death is one that is not shown.

Vera tracks down an injured Captain to explain the real circumstances of a key character’s death, beyond the official platitudes and the result is a stomach-churning tear jerker as she learns the true depths of his suffering.

“I don’t fear what’s real, I fear what’s imagined,” wrote Vera in one of her letters to the front. Perhaps that’s true for the audience too.

Touches of Kent’s direction are almost poetic, particularly the way he deals with death. When Vera learns of the death of another person close to her, there is a long, mournful silence that is only eventually broken by the crashing of steely grey waves.

Testament of Youth is a beautiful film about the strength and bravery of people during an ugly war.

  • FOUR out of five stars.

Testament of Youth (12A), running time 130 minutes. Out Friday, January 16.