Transcript of Colin's Answers from the Testament of Youth BFI Screening Press Conference
From the video of press conference here.
WARNING: TRANSCRIPT CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR COLIN’S CHARACTER
Q. Colin, I wondered… Before you got in front of the cameras, if you all had a chance to hang out? Did you have rehearsal time? Did you do improvisations? Did you find some way to bond? Because you’re so compelling as these…and natural as these devoted school buddies.
Colin: What was great is, we got the chance to do a bit of a rehearsal with James [Kent] before starting…which is invaluable and rare in the film industry at the minute. I think we’re lucky as well that James cast it very well because we naturally got on. And I think doing our own individual research with the letters that these people wrote themselves between each other and understanding exactly what the bond was between them in such a tumultuous time was, I think, was important; coming in with those connections, coming in with those feelings, and coming in very much with a duty and a dedication to these people. I think that was paramount, and I think that reflected really when we got on set together and we felt it, you know? I think that it did feel like a special…special moments.
Narrator: Yeah it shows. Thank you.
*
Q. (person is from a Japanese newspaper). Hi, I would like to ask Colin and Taron about when you discovered the book [Testament of Youth] and what do you think about it and how much did you use it during shooting?
Colin: I hadn’t actually come across the book before coming across the script, so I read it [the script] first and when I came on board, I began to read the book. And for me, it was an area that I wasn’t…that I hadn’t really grown up being educated on the first World War.
It felt a bit like an alien world to me, so I felt like I did have to become a little bit immersed in it. Again, I find Letters from a Lost Generation [a book Vera Brittain published that contained letters from the four men as well as herself], the letters that they wrote themselves, extremely useful just being able to read their letters, essentially in what is now going to be their “voice” in this film. And so, what struck me was a big element of what the book’s about, of what the film’s about, and what the war was partially about was youth, and how it was lost, and that essentially, this part of their youth that was lost is a part that we now, in this day and age, are very privileged to have. And if you take that section of youth out of your upbringing, it makes life very, very difficult, very…almost impossible in terms of an emotional point of view.
And I think that’s what’s so impressive about Vera Brittain’s journey and which Alicia [Vikander] gets across phenomenally in the film is the power to overcome, the power to try to pick up your life after what you’ve lost, and she lost a massive part of her youth, and that to me was what the film really gets across, particularly to our generation and to the people who have been through it, or who know or very close to people who have been through it.
Narrator: You’re nodding in agreement, Taron. Would you like to add something?
Taron: No, I’m actually just thinking that I have no hope of coming out with anything as profound as that!
*
Q. (The question was directed at Kit, Taron, and Colin about what it was like to work with Alicia Vikander)
Colin: And again, I can only absolutely agree with that as well. We all had our moments with Vera, special moments throughout the film, and they did feel special when you came to them. I think in your head before you shoot a scene, you’ve always got a feeling about it; you’ve always got an impression about it, but you only ever get that truly and emotionally whenever you’re living it, and it felt like we were living it with Alicia. That was…that’s what felt so special about it because she inhabited Vera in every respect: in a truthful, in an honest, in such a detailed way that I think as an audience, you’re absolutely pulled along on the journey with her and you feel everything she feels because I genuinely believe she really did feel it when she was doing it.
*
Q. Colin, I was wondering if you had done any practicing being blind?
Colin: Yes. I contacted the Blind Veterans UK charity who, apart from the experience I had with them, are a fantastic, fantastic charity. I didn’t realise there were so many blind people in the UK that weren’t availing of their help, and should, I think.
But I took myself off on the train down to Brighton where their centre is, with a view to interview some of their residents there. I was very keen to interview someone who had possibly been blinded in World War II and possibly someone who was younger, around my age, who had been blinded recently, and I did. I got the two perspectives on that; the perspective of time and the very raw, recent perspective from a younger guy.
But, when I walked in, they decided that they were going to treat me as a recently acquired blind resident. So whenever I came in, they put a blindfold on me and I was given a tour of the building and taken in as a resident there for…I think I must have spent about five or six hours as a blind person. And they brought me to their workshops and I was making things. They brought me to their gym. They brought me to the kitchen to try to make a cup of tea.
And my responses to that as someone who had vision and then taken away was surreal. Everyone had a colour. I was convinced that the person taking me around was wearing a pink cardigan…she wasn’t; she was wearing a green jumper. Or, you know, I went into a room, we sat there having a cup of tea…I was convinced we were sitting facing a mirror and there wasn’t a mirror in the room because after I had had the experience, they had taken me on the same tour around the building again, but with my sight.
And to me that was a valuable…it was…it was tough. It did a lot of things to me mentally, and also [to] the people I spoke to, particularly the guy who had lost his sight recently. It was still very raw and very recent. And so it gave me a real clue as to what that would feel like for someone of that time, and you know, I think I tried to utilise that within the film, but also as a life experience. I think it was something that was really unique.
*
Q. Just hearing Colin speak there, and I thought the film did it brilliantly, almost with very few words…
It showed how Vera brought home her experiences of the war and then when she returned home, everything around seems rather twee and pat. I wondered if the actors had a similar experience working on this film in that you immersed yourself into it so deeply that when you go on to the next job, you almost…it feels not quite as big?
Colin: (nodding) There is always that feeling of a come down in any job that you do. I think you invest yourself in it so much, you try to dedicate yourself to it 110 percent, I think, and that…if you’ve done it right, you should have that feeling afterwards. There’s something wrong if you haven’t, maybe, you know…you have to have the come down. You have to have a feeling of missing it, I think, or you know… and yeah, certainly having, you know, when we shot the last day or, for example, when we shot one of the scenes which were, you know, a key scene for your character, like the blind scene, which we had done in the audition as well… It feels like a moment gone. You only get it once for filming and then it exists forever onscreen, and so… But your personal experience of it is kind of gone and then when the movie wraps, all the people and everyone attached to it are gone, too. But then, as an actor, you have to pick it all up and go on to the next one and put that one away in a little suitcase somewhere.