{"id":3448,"date":"2015-06-06T02:30:04","date_gmt":"2015-06-06T02:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theduanewells.com\/?p=3448"},"modified":"2018-07-25T03:01:39","modified_gmt":"2018-07-25T03:01:39","slug":"kit-harington-on-yorkshire-his-new-film-testament-of-youth-and-how-he-really-sees-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/kit-harington-on-yorkshire-his-new-film-testament-of-youth-and-how-he-really-sees-himself\/","title":{"rendered":"Kit Harington: On Yorkshire, His New Film \u2018Testament of Youth\u2019, and How He Really Sees Himself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kit-Harington-Testament-of-Youth\"<\/a>
Kit Harington, Testament of Youth directed by James Kent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the world marks the centenary of the First World War, the new film Testament of Youth<\/em><\/a>, directed by James Kent and starring Game of Thrones <\/em>hero Kit Harington and Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, revisits the landscape of the England that inspired Vera Brittain\u2019s seminal memoir upon which the film is based, while simultaneously celebrating the majestically diverse beauty of Yorkshire, one of Great Britain\u2019s crown jewels.<\/p>\n

In the film, Vikander takes on the role of Brittain, the pugnacious, free-spirited, feminist-leaning aspiring young writer whose whole world is forever changed by the war. Meanwhile an almost unrecognizable Kit Harington portrays Roland Leighton, the great love of Brittain\u2019s life who heads off to war full of the kind of cocksure arrogance that misguidedly led England\u2019s leaders at the time to believe the First World War would be a scant six month affair rather than the grief-stricken four year stretch that became its brutal legacy.<\/p>\n

Told from a woman\u2019s point of view, Testament of Youth<\/em> is, like the book, a beautifully crafted meditation on love, loss and unpacking the baggage that those left behind struggle with in war\u2019s aftermath. Not a traditional Hollywood epic wherein warfare is viewed through the soldiers\u2019 lens, Testament of Youth<\/em> is instead a contemplative film that leans on often painful moments of resilience, sacrifice, survival and transition rather than guts and glory to explore life during wartime. It is also a film that is a far cry from the more testosterone driven fare that has placed Harington, the film\u2019s male lead, atop Hollywood\u2019s list of most in demand stars. And it is a departure that the actor welcomed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was slightly the reason that I wanted to do this film,\u201d Harington explained of his attraction to the role during a recent sit down in Beverly Hills. \u00a0\u201cUnlikely as it seems to me, I\u2019ve been doing a lot of action hero roles. Spooks,<\/em> I filmed just after this so it was a nice balancing act between the two films \u2013 one period and one modern-day contemporary. But it was more the emotional journey that I could go through with this film \u2013 the transition that the character goes through \u2013\u00a0that was important [to me] rather than trying to break away from some kind of stereotype.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were various reasons that I wanted to do [Testament of Youth<\/em>],\u201d he continued. \u201cLoving the source material, really having a very good feeling about the director James [Kent] from the get go and also wanting to work with Alicia who was a friend prior to doing this movie. And it was also a chance to quite frankly look very different from how I usually have to look,\u201d he adds with a hint of a laugh referring to the fact that in the role of Leighton his normally tousled mane has been tamed as part of his transformation from action hero to uniformed, poetry-writing English gentleman\/matinee idol.<\/p>\n

\"Kit-Harington-Yorkshire-Testament-of-Youth\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite the seeming departure from the onscreen persona that has become part and parcel of his budding body of work, Harington says that off screen he is actually more akin to Roland Leighton than he is to the swashbuckling Jon Snow character he plays on Game of Thrones<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2018I think this character is a much closer fit to who I see myself as,\u201d the actor ruminates. \u201cHe had similar interests to me and\u2026I guess if I was born in that period, we would have been from similar backgrounds. So it did feel like a more natural fit to me as a person than these sort of fantastical action heroes I\u2019ve been used to playing. He was a real life person as opposed to a modern day spy in a Bourne-esque spy thriller or a fantasy sword-wielding hero.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the film\u2019s third star, the county of Yorkshire, which provides the sweeping and romantic backdrop against which much of the film\u2019s drama unfolds, Harington feels a similar kinship. \u201cStrangely enough in Game of Thrones<\/em> I play a Yorkshireman and in this film I\u2019m not playing a Yorkshireman and yet we were filming in Yorkshire,\u201d Harington muses. \u201cYorkshire\u2026 and Yorkshire Dales, where we shot a lot of [the film], is a part of the world that I love \u2026and\u2026It\u2019s a stunningly beautiful area of England.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harington\u2019s sentiments are echoed by the film\u2019s Northern born director who like Brittain not only attended Oxford University, but was also brought up in the neighboring county of Derbyshire. \u201cYorkshire people call Yorkshire \u2018god\u2019s own county,\u2019\u201d Kent says brightly as he fondly recalls his childhood home. \u201cI think it\u2019s just the most stunning place in the world. It also has terrific nature and nature mattered to Vera. She loved flowers, she loved birds, she loved wildlife and the landscape of Yorkshire refracts her feelings. I wanted nature to be a metaphor for the virgin soil before it got scarred by war. It\u2019s this beautiful Eden before the war comes and the trenches are built and the mud desecrates the landscape. [So] everything was shot there \u2013 the beaches, the moorlands, the beautiful lake\u2026it\u2019s stunning.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the final analysis, the onscreen combo of Vikander, Harington and Yorkshire as handled by Kent in Testament of Youth<\/em>, delivers a story not simply about loss and grief but also one of inspiration that imparts some lasting life lessons, one of the most overarching of which is expressed by Kent himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach and every one of us is born in search of a voice,\u201d the director explains. \u201c[Each of us is born] in search of a way of having an entitlement in this world to say what we want to say and Vera went through hell in order to find that artistic voice. And that\u2019s the lesson for all of us\u2026it will be tough but at the end of it, you will be wiser, richer and you\u2019ll have more compassion for your fellow human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Kit-and-Alicia-Testament-of-Youth\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Testament of Youth<\/em> opens in theatres on June 5th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

To read this feature on the Huffington Post, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the world marks the centenary of the First World War, the new film Testament of Youth, directed by James Kent and starring Game of Thrones hero Kit Harington and Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, revisits the landscape of the England that inspired Vera Brittain\u2019s seminal memoir upon which the film is based, while simultaneously celebrating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":3451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1588],"tags":[1353,1354,1355,1356,1357,1358,1359,1360,1133,1143,1183,1206,1351,1352],"class_list":["post-3448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-vera-brittain","tag-kitharington","tag-yorkshire","tag-testamentofyouth","tag-gameofthrones","tag-interviews","tag-aliciavikander","tag-james-kent","tag-entertainment","tag-interview","tag-celebrity","tag-film","tag-jonsnow","tag-england"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3448"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5289,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3448\/revisions\/5289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}