Le dernier testament

I first saw "Testament" when it came out in 1983. At the time, I was 30 years old and the mother of a two year-old son. As a child of the Cold War years, I have always been interested in films about that most unthinkable event: the detonation of a nuclear bomb or bombs somewhere on our fragile planet. 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. The town and its citizens, including the Weatherly family, escape initial destruction. But slowly the bonds that hold western societies together (electricity, communication, fresh food, medical help) begin to fray and ravel. There is no television. Batteries to power transistor radios suddenly become more valuable than $20 bills in a town where, suddenly, there's nothing left to buy.

The story and scenes are permeated with a sense of enormous loss. A family loses its husband and father who simply walked out the door, waving a breezy goodbye one morning, and disappeared into the holocaust. All his wife, Carol, and two children have left of him are their memories and some flickering images on home movies, glimpses not just of a lost loved one, but of a lost -- and loved -- world.

A school play about the Pied Piper was in rehearsal before catastrophe hit, and, desperate to recapture some normalcy and to divert the children's attention from a reality to horrible to contemplate, the town decides to go on with the show.In the earlier rehearsal scenes, life was normal, the future shone brightly in the children's faces. Now, as the parents watch the performance, they see no future for these beautiful innocents. To me, this is the key scene of the film: the contrast between what these people once had and what has been lost is staggering. It makes you want to go outside, smell the air, marvel at the full supermarket shelves and the working telephone lines. (This is a gift that the movie gives its audience which goes far beyond entertainment and approaches enlightenment.)

Beyond the wonderful writing, direction and performances, I love the tiny touches in the story. For example, there's the foreshadowing, the implicit warning contained in the presence of a minor character, a little Japanese boy with Down Syndrome who is cared for by the town after his father dies. The child's name is Hiroshi. 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.

I've been a fanatic of disaster movies and post-apocalypse Sci-Fi for practically my entire life already, but I have deliberately been avoiding the actual "nuclear bomb impact" films. There were several of these released during the early 80's. Apart from "Testament", there's also "The Day After", "Threads", "Letters from a Dead Man" and "When the Wind Blows". All these aforementioned films have high ratings, favorable reviews and impeccable cult-reputations. So, then why haven't I seen them before? Because the impact of these films, pretty much like the H-bomb itself, is downright devastating, and yours truly is a very sensitive person!

There's a world of difference between sci-fi films set in post-nuclear wastelands, where a handful of human survivors drive around in dune buggies and battle each other over a tank of fuel, and actually witnessing the long and excruciatingly painful process which leads to the complete extinction of mankind. And even though writer Carol Amen and director Lynne Littman absolutely restrain from turning "Testament" into a sentimental tearjerker, the film is inescapably harrowing, and numerous sequences caused me to burst into tears.

The story takes place in the peaceful little community of Hamlin, a suburb of San Francisco, and introduces the model family of Tom and Carol Wetherly and their three children. Everything they love and worked for literally vanishes in a bright and sudden flash. Hamlin's unusual geographical location, in a sort of mountain bowl, safeguards the town from instantaneous destruction, but this rapidly proves to be a curse instead of a blessing. Without any form of sensationalism, or raising idle hope, Littman depicts how the townspeople and loved ones succumb around Carol, whilst radio contact with the rest of the world fades even further away.

The aptly titled "Testament" is a beautiful, frustrating, haunting, infuriating and noble film all at once. The performances are stellar, and the use of music is staggering. The only remote default, according to me, isn't even a shortcoming in the film itself. I find it unjust that so many people must emphasize in their reviews that "Testament" was directed by a woman, and hence make the film somewhat of a monument of feminism. As far as I'm concerned, gender equality is incontrovertible, and women are just as skilled and talented as directors as males. Lynne Littman did a fantastic job as a director; - period!

I've seen this movie twice, and "Testament" still lingers in my brain as an atom bomb movie. And it's not really about that - the bomb comes and goes fairly quickly - but more about how a community comes together during the aftermath. It's kinda funny how the movie flips from TV commercial suburban life to sobering angst, where precious resources are rationed and then dry up completely.

But it is a powerful movie, thanks largely to the characters and the performances. Even as death loiters nearby and the losses keep piling up (god, this movie just keeps taking), there's Jane Alexander hanging on til the bitter end. Despite the climate of that period in the early '80s, subtlety is really this movie's strong suit. Characters die off, one by one, but it's never staged or theatrical. Very subdued; we'll just get a single image and put the horrifying pieces together.

It's kinda hard to believe there's a (tiny) ray of hope at the end of this thing. But man, it's a punishing journey.

7/10

It's been TWENTY YEARS (!) since I've seen this movie in a theatre, and I've never yet forgotten it. If any movie can be said to be life-changing, this is it. TESTAMENT was first shown in theatres, and the film's power became front page headlines for quite some time. People were crying in theatres, and article after article told of how this extremely powerful film affected people. This was not hype; the emotional strength of this movie is genuinely powerful.

For myself, I held back as best I could from crying in the theatre (me being a 23 year old guy seeing it with two (married) friends). But the effect on me was apparently visible immediately: when I walked out of the theatre and passed thru the line of people waiting for the next showing, a woman, who was laughing with her friends, happened to look at me and her face went completely serious. I very nearly hugged her right there, this stranger. When I got home, I cried for about two hours. The film's themes affected my, at the time, concerns about love, relationships, and such like.

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. One of my all time favorite supporting actors is in this film, and he does a fantastic job: Mako. He and the young retarded (Down Syndrome?) boy who plays his son make a phenomenal team. They're my favorite characters: so full of innocence, father so full of love, strength and pain. Agh... my god my god... what a movie. Whew.

Testament (1983) was one of the few films that came out during the 80's that dealt with the Nuclear War scenario seriously. Jane Alexander stars as the matriarch of your typical middle class family. One day when the father (Bill Devane) is on a business trip, life as we know it was ended when the missiles were launched. Who or what caused this holocaust was never explained. But the only that thing that matters now is survival and trying to keep the family together. 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. There's no big budgeted effects or over the top acting in this film. Just raw emotion, great acting and a real good script and direction that fuels this drama. I strongly recommend this movie for all the reasons I have stated.