Metacritic-Rezensionen

Alexander's performance makes the film possible to watch without unbearable heartbreak, because she is brave and decent in the face of the horror. And the last scene, in which she expresses such small optimism as is still possible, is one of the most powerful movie scenes I've ever seen.

What makes Lynn Littman's film so devastating -- beyond, that is, the power of Jane Alexander's brilliant performance as the surviving mother -- is its icy control and its complete disavowal of sentimentality and sensationalism. It's a small monument to the principle of understatement. [02 Dec 1983, p.B1]

A gentle, loving, noble, angry and heartrending film.

Testament is an exceptionally powerful film dealing with the survivors of a nuclear war. Debuting director Lynne Littman brings an original approach to the grim material.

Testament makes nuclear war a disaster that must never happen, not by showing its massive devastation, but by depicting humanity's capacity to love. [29 Nov 1983]

That Testament doesn't wallow in cheap sentimentality or grisly detail is a testament to the talents of first-time feature film director Lynne Littman, her superb cast and screenwriter John Young. [20 Jan 1984, p.4C]

Miss Littman, who directed and was co-producer of Testament, gives its individual scenes a very realistic air, even if the film's overall conception is sometimes strained.

Focusing on one family in a small northern California town that seems to have survived an initial attack, Littman quickly loses interest in the logic of the concept (the naturalistic presentation of an unnatural event) and begins pushing the sentimental pornography of death.

A dreadfully earnest but fatally uninspired effort to compress the aftermath of an epic catastrophe, massive nuclear war, into a small-scale family memoir.

Testament deserves some credit for its message; it's too bad that its delivery is strictly third class. [04 Nov 1983, p.48]