Testament
Tags: tragedy, flashback, home movie

Plot synopsis:
It is a typical morning in the Wetherly house. Carol is trying to get her three children (Brad, Mary Liz, and Scottie) up and ready for school. Her husband Tom and older son Brad go on a quick bike ride. Tom is rather critical of Brad, especially when his son is unable to reach the top of a steep hill. On the way home they greet an elderly neighbor, Henry Abhart, and Mike, the owner of a gas station. Mike has a special needs son, Hiroshi, who sometimes goes fishing with the Wetherlys.Carol is helping to direct a play at the elementary school. Since their California town is named Hamlin, the children are putting on "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." Mary Liz provides a piano accompaniment and Scottie plays a little crippled boy.That night, Carol is unable to sleep. She wakes Tom, worried about what to get Brad for his thirteenth birthday. Tom sleepily reminds her that it isn't for another two months. They discuss how fast Brad is growing up and Carol decides to start keeping a diary.The next afternoon, the children are watching TV in the living room. Carol is listening to the answering machine messages. There is one from her mother in Chicago. Tom is in San Francisco on a business trip. He leaves two messages; one that he will be home for dinner and another one stating that he won't be able to make it after all. The TV picture is fuzzy and Brad fusses with the antenna. The telephone rings and Carol answers but the call is apparently lost. Suddenly the program is interrupted by a special report. Bombs are falling up and down the east coast and in other locations, including nearby San Francisco. Citizens are urged to stay off the telephones as the lines must be kept open for official use. Stay tuned for a message from the White House. Just then the TV goes off completely and loud sirens are heard. A bright light is seen outside. Carol screams for the children to get on the floor and cover their eyes.After the sirens and light are gone, people begin venturing outside their homes. A child is heard crying. Everyone is asking what happened. Later most of the neighbors gather at the Abhart home. Carol leaves a note for Tom in case he comes home. Henry is a ham radio operator and has been in contact with other cities that were hit. He can't raise anyone in San Francisco at all. Carol asks if he's been able to contact Chicago but the answer is no. Attempting to be as positive as possible, Henry assures his neighbors that they are down but not out. If anyone needs food or water, the Abharts will share what they have. Henry will keep on trying to reach other cities.At the gas station, Mike is only serving his regular customers. All others, especially those who never had time for him and Hiroshi, are ordered away at gunpoint. Carol wants to pay for her gas but Mike tells her it has already been paid for many times over.Tom never turns up. Carol takes in Larry, a neighbor's child whose parents are missing. At a community meeting, the mayor, police chief, and Rev. Hollis are optimistic that help will arrive. There has been looting at the supermarket and pharmacy, but those places are now under guard. There are questions about exposure to radiation. Cathy Pitkin, a young mother and friend of the Wetherlys, is worried about the health of her baby. The doctor says that he doesn't have the equipment to measure how much radiation they've all been exposed to.Food is rationed and batteries are collected to be given out as needed. Brad catches an older boy stealing batteries and confronts him. Gradually people begin to fall ill. Each day Henry Abhart is able to reach fewer cities. But life keeps going. The children give their play. Mary Liz continues her piano lessons with Henry's wife. Then the Pitkins' baby dies. They decide to leave and find a safer place, assuring Carol that they will come back one day. The doctor also leaves. There are rumors of survivors' camps in northern Canada, but the Wetherlys decide to remain in Hamlin.Scottie falls ill and dies. Carol tears the house apart looking for his teddy bear but she can't find it. Rev. Hollis is unable to wait any longer and begins the service. Mary Liz asks her mother what sex is like, realizing that she herself will never know. Brad continues his daily visits to Henry, whose wife is now ill. He asks Brad to take over her job of checking on the neighbors.Carol has been writing in her diary but can no longer remember the date. Larry dies and then Mary Liz. The boy who was stealing batteries breaks into the Wetherly home. Brad runs him off but the boy steals his bike. Reluctantly he begins using his father's bicycle, recalling the last morning they rode together.A second community meeting is sparsely attended. Many have died. The police chief, visibly exhausted and ill, says that his men are on duty and will remain for as long as possible. Garbage pickup is suspended as they don't have the manpower. There is no longer any hope that help will arrive. Rev. Hollis urges people to bury the dead carefully as the cemetery is now full.Hiroshi's father has died and Brad brings the boy home. Carol is now showing symptoms of radiation poisoning but manages to keep going. While she is watching a bonfire at the cemetery, Brad brings word of Henry Abhart's death. After he leaves, Carol begins screaming and pulling up chunks of grass. Rev. Hollis finds her and they kiss, not from love but the sheer need of human contact.Carol and Brad decide to end their lives, taking Hiroshi with them. They close the garage door and climb into the car. Carol starts the engine, then cuts it off. She can't bring herself to go through with it. Brad also has changed his mind. It is his birthday. As a treat, Carol spreads graham crackers with jam and lights candles. Hiroshi suddenly brings her Scottie's teddy bear. She is overjoyed and asks where he found it but he can't tell her. Although they will all soon die, the mood is one of peace.

Review: If you are, too, you must watch "Testament" (and another small gem of a slightly earlier era called "Fail-Safe.")This is a wonderful film that slowly, unbearably reveals what happens in the small, idyllic town of Hamlin after a full-scale nuclear exchange between the superpowers wipes out a large part of America.
Pay attention, the script commands us in a whisper: Hiroshima happened once, but it can happen again, and it can happen to you as well as "them." In the end, the movie is a testament to this undeniable fact, a testament to the stupidity of men who continue building ever-larger, more lethal means of mass destruction, and finally, a testament to the strength of mothers like the character of Carol Weatherly who have no choice but to love and protect their children no matter what comes..
This small film from 1983 might actually be more emotionally devastating than "Schindler's List" because it presents us with a horrific "what-if" scenario that I imagine scared the be-jesus out of viewers in the Cold War era that it was made and will send shivers down the spine of anyone who watches it today.
I was so deeply effected by this film's portrayal or one family in one small California town getting cut off from the rest of civilization (which we can only assume is in the midst of WWIII) and slowly falling apart while one by one loved ones succumb to nuclear radiation that I couldn't watch it all.
One scene I'll never EVER forget, the most devastating: the 13-ish year old daughter asks her mother, "What's it like?" MOTHER: "What's what like?" DAUGHTER: "Making love." The mother (Jane Alexander -- my God, what a performance!) tells her in a very frank and beautiful speech, and the daughter caps off that scene with a devastating remark that just kills you and got my tears flowing (I probably couldn't hold back at that point).Before making TESTAMENT, director Lynne Littman had made only documentaries, so maybe that "realism" style added to the power and believability of this movie.
I never thought a film about nuclear war could be more moving than "The Day After" or "Threads".
Several times I considered shutting the film off, thinking "What good is it doing me to watch this depressing movie?" But each time I convinced myself to stick it out, and I'm glad I did.I don't know what it was; the strength of Jane Alexander's performance, the combined performances by the younger actors playing her children, the excellent and artistic (yet remarkably matter-of-fact) cinematography, the haunting beauty of James Horner's score, or all of the above, but "Testament" just got into me and tore my very soul apart.
There's no graphic "ground zero" scenes like in the other two films, just the story of a family struggling to survive, trying to stay hopeful beyond all hope.The scene that I think will stick with me forever is the shot of Jane Alexander tearing apart bedsheets.
That's all I'll say about this scene for now since I don't want to give anything away, but watch the film and you'll know what I'm talking about.As other reviews have alluded to, "The Day After" and "Testament" both came out around the same time, yet "Testament" is far less known and remembered among the two films, even though most consider it the better of the two.
With a movie like this, I think it's easier to just watch it on TV than to bring yourself to actually go out to a theater to experience this type of film."Testament" is one of those films like "The Hours".
I have to say that "Testament" will look more realistic to rural people, who may just die slowly as the characters in this film do, rather than be subjected to the immediate effects of the attack.Rebecca De Mornay's appearance in this film, which I only saw after seeing "By Dawn's Early Light", makes a connection between these two films.
Forget Freddie and Jason, if you want a real horror film then I recommend this because I think it will keep most normal people awake long into the night.
This film doesn't rely on gore or violence to get its message across; instead it takes the very familiar scene of a loving young family living in a close-knit town and dumps them into the harsh, harrowing realities of nuclear war where there is no mercy for either the good or the innocent.'Testament' is a tale of what would happen if a nuclear strike devastated America and how average people, who have no military training or the like, would cope.
Jane Alexander was excellent as a Carol, a mother striving to see her family through this disaster, watching as the town around her dwindles as people die of radiation poisoning or flee for safer pastors.
Through him, we are able to see how a child would deal with such an event and how the innocence of childhood is brought to a sharp end as Brad is forced to take the role of an adult for the sake of his family.After seeing 'Testament', I don't think I'll ever really stop pondering the issues it raised and how it is vitally important that the governments of all countries do anything and everything to ensure we never have to deal with such an event in real life.
a distictly female look at Nuclear War. All of the comments i have read about this film focus on it's bleakness, on it's difficultly - due to subject matter, and many of them also quite rightly applaud the performance of Jane Alexander in the Central role.
No mass hysteria, violence, rape, disfigurement or any of those other factors that are paraded as horrifying in the majority of Nuclear War films - I am thinking specifically of Threads and The Day After Here.In Testament we actually see humanity.
What tragic world lies ahead for the family now that life as they knew it was changed forever?A real heartbreaking film that shows the side of the human condition that we all have deep within us.
This is made harder when her own children are affected and slowly begin to die away.Critique: This is probably the bleakest, most depressing post-nuclear war film you're likely to see.
If you want to know what the aftermath of nuclear war would truly be like, watch this movie.
The biggest "perk" of all, is that I live in "Hamlin", actually Sierra Madre, CA, the city this was filmed in, and it has barely changed in the 20 years since the movie was filmed (Sierra Madre hasn't changed much in the 35 years my family has lived there) The overwhelming "reality" of it all is what really hits home, because it's not a science fiction version of what a nuclear attack would be like, it's the way it would effect real people, living real lives, going about their real existence.
In fact, if you watch it with a science point of view you will be disappointed because what it happens looks more like an epidemic, not like a nuclear winter.Testament is intended to capture your feelings, not to show you shock waves or gore.
Jane Alexander gives a moving performance as a mother trying to cope with the loss of her husband and the expected after effects  of a nuclear bomb attack.
It rates right up there with "Saving Private Ryan" as an absolutely, almost perfect film that should never be watched, except by those who still think that "Mutually Assured Destruction" is a good idea, or that war is honorable and a viable solution to the world's problems.
One of the things that makes "Testament" so interesting is simply the fact that one expects a movie about the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust to be exciting.
Testament is an elegant yet powerful film which depicts a family trying to survive the aftermath of a nuclear war.
Jane Alexander is incredible as the mother of three children who slowly watches the effect the nuclear fallout has on them and her.
Perhaps this is what makes it one of the most effective film commentaries on the horrors of nuclear war.Others have written about the "trilogy" of "World War III" films to come out of the 1980's; "The Day After" (ABC Television's rather lame attempt at depicting the end of the world, which amounts to no more than a poorly made television movie), "Threads" (BBC's take on the same subject, which is so incredibly impactful, horrifying, and nausiating that one only needs see it once), and, of course, "Testament."Indeed, for the first 1/3 of the film, we see the everyday life of a small town family dealing with everyday problems.
The first time I saw this film was after I had found "The Day After" from a superstore in the bargain area, knowing it was about nuclear war and had a stellar cast, but that was pretty much it.
The mom of the family, Carol Weatherly, played masterfully by Jane Alexander, has to find a way to survive with her three kids and one other that she picks up whose parents were away and probably killed in the attack.
I don't think this is a fair criticism; some people from the town try to flee, but it seems sensible to me that there would be others, like the Weatherlys, who would see that any attempt at traveling to safety would face long odds and that trying to live out the rest of their days in their home would be sensible decision.This decision, however, does not save the family from despair, and this perhaps is the saddest part of this extremely sad movie.
The film compares to another movie made around the time it was released, The Day After, instead of seeing the bombs raining down on cities, the "less is more" technique is used as a blinding white flash is used to show a nuclear attack.
This film was far better than "Threads" (of course, any movie would be better than that one) and yet not quite as good and as powerful as "The Day After".
When you make a movie involving something as tragic as nuclear war, you need it all--good acting, good special effects, and convincing story lines.
With a wasted first 20 minutes spent badly introducing a family you care less about at the end of the film than you do when you first meet them, this film slowly trundles down-hill with unending inevitability.Any positives that you may look for in terms of the hopelessness of the situation and the lack of support and information provided to the community, are constantly under-mined by the fact that as a viewer, you have no desire for these people to survive the disaster.Devoid of genuine emotion and without even one half-decent performance to mention, some satisfaction can be gained by playing an entertaining game of "Guess Which Child Will Die Off-screen Next"..
It made me think about my life and how I would want to live me last hours if a Nuclear attack happened.This movie was powerful beyond words.
One of the movie's surefire touches of genius lies in the fact that its narrating protagonist, a commonplace small-town mother very well-played by Jane Alexander, never learns who triggered the nuclear war that wrecks life as she knows it.
Listen to it and treat it as the foundation for most of his future "dramatic" scores, such as "Titanic" and "Apollo 13."James Horner is one of the few composers that can make me cry with his music alone, and I believe it is because I am reminded of this film when I hear it.*****SPOILER*****The scene in which the young japanese boy (a remarkable performance, considering he is mentally handicapped in real life and surprisingly never mentioned in any of these reviews) finds the missing toy bear caused possibly the most emotional response from me that I have ever experienced while watching a movie.Testament, as of this date, is most definately the saddest film I have ever seen.
This movie is far away from "The Day After": this film is hopeless.There is no after!
From Carol (Jane Alexander) talking to her daughter Mary about love and sexuality which Mary will never experience, seeing Scottie (Lucas Haas) burying his action figures and thinking of running away, Carol watching a family film and listening to her husband's voice on an answering machine as if she's waiting for him to come back home.
You realize the conversation would have never taken place without these extreme circumstances, you admire the mother's explanation, and then you realize that she is being confronted yet again with more proof that her children will not survive.For the record, I am not a mother, I don't typically feel very squishy about kids or family stories, and my ideal of a personal hell would be to be forced to live in a small town and attend school plays and do PTA stuff while I wait for some man to come home from an interesting job...but that perspective did not stop this movie from touching me deeply.
Possible spoilers!Testament is a movie that I do not want to see again, but not because it was a bad film.
This being said, Testament is a movie that should be seen, as it is well acted and a powerful tale of survival, death, and loss.Set in a small town outside San Francisco, the film begins with people going about their lives just like any other day.
Unlike The Day After, this film has little special effects and focuses on a small group of people, which makes it more powerful.The mounting number of deaths from radiation is handled effectively and is quite scary; one very memorable shot near the end of the movie shows a playground having been converted to a cemetery, with a swing set moving slowly in the breeze with dozens of graves in the background.
I did not even know this movie existed when I watched it last night and I was not expecting much;it was a revelation ;apart from Jane Alexander and William Devane -whose part is short-the actors are not known abroad,but it's not a problem.In Stanley Kramer's "on the beach"(1959),the all-stars cast was not necessarily a good thing."Testament' ,dedicated to the director's family,is an "on the beach" in miniature,more intimate and as devastating;almost devoid of special effects ,without the usual cardboard characters (Alexander and Devane are a happy couple,their marriage is not on the rocks ,like in the disaster movies )The policeman's return from a city where no one is alive anymore reminds me of the submarine crew in a deserted San Francisco in Kramer's classic.We do not know anything about the political context although one Alexander's remark puzzles me:late at night, sleepless in her bed ,she tells her husband "their son would be called up " (when he was eighteen),which is all the more amazing since the draft was abolished in 1972;is there a war going on?or about to break?Except for the very early scenes ,particularly when Devane and his son go cycling in the country ,all the scenes are deeply depressing ,and the movie is as pessimistic as desperate as it can be ;people do not die on the screen,but the young husband carrying her dead baby girl,Alexander rocking her dying youngest child in his blood-stained sheets , and later sewing a shroud for her daughter are strong moments ;the same ,searching for the teddy bear and screaming to the priest beginning his prayers that she doesn't care about God ;or cursing ,à la Charlton Heston in "planet in the apes" (1968),all those who did "that",down on her knees in the graveyard.A great actress's performance.A movie which might leave the viewer brooding all along ;only the scene when mom and her son dances to the Beatles' "all my loving" ,the imaginary return of the husband near the grave ,and the home movies (which recall those of "the last man on earth "(1964) based on Matheson's "the omega man")preserve him from despair.Anti - Hollywoodian to the core ,with a terrific use of the "pied piper" ominous tale ,it is really a sleeper which should be hailed as a sci-fi classic,at a time when the genre is swamped with special effects..
The film doesn't show any of the true horrors of watching your children slowly die from radiation sickness as you continue to look after them.
"Testament" is a lovely little film that stands out among other productions of the time that dealt with the after effects of nuclear war.
Even though the fear of nuclear war has greatly subsided (replace by other fears) this movie is very powerful.The breakdown of normal, the way this family tries to hold it together (thru the strength of mom) as everything around them falls down, very gripping.** here is a spoiler ** There is a scene where the mother bathes her youngest son so gently, then wraps him in a blanket and rocks him while singing.
People get up, leave for work on a normal day and then, in the middle of Sesame Street, the world just ends.Testament focuses on the lives of one family in a small California town surviving this fate.
I enjoyed the film very much, but I felt myself being angry the entire time with the mother....like your watching your children die, clearly the radiation levels where you are are unacceptable, but you stay; why???
However, emotion is a very broad spectrum pool of feelings, and in contrast with the actual realities of nuclear war, this one is easily the less believable of the major 3 (Threads, Day After, Testament).
Testament was the first "end of the world" movie I saw, and it has scarred me for life.
I would have to disagree with those who find this movie far more realistic than The Day After in its depiction of the consequences of nuclear war.