Testament

Apologies for the dearth of updates this week. I’m juggling a few different things (and my juggling skills are currently not up to much).

All the talk about THREADS over the last few weeks prompted me to go back and look at another excellent, but far less well known, nuclear war film. It’s LYNNE LITTMAN’s subdued 1983 suburban apocalypse movie, TESTAMENT.

The life of a suburban American family is scarred after a nuclear attack.

The synopsis I’ve quoted above, cribbed from IMDB, is pretty lame, don’t you think? People’s lives would be considerably more than just ‘scarred’ by a nuclear attack. Perhaps devastated? Torn apart? Vaporised? As other films and books have argued, it’s likely the worst effects of nuclear war will be those that come in the days, weeks, months, and years after the initial blasts – the poisoning and gradual degradation of everything and everyone. Unlike most other films of its ilk, TESTAMENT eschews the usual dramatic scenes and situations and focuses on that slow decay, the prolonged death of a wholly unprepared community. In many ways, it feels more akin to WHEN THE WIND BLOWS, than THE DAY AFTER. Originally made as a timely TV movie, it so impressed studio execs that it was given a cinema release. Watch out for early turns from future big stars, including KEVIN COSTNER and REBECCA DE MORNAY.

JANE ALEXANDER (who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance) stars as Carol Weatherly, a busy mother of three, living in a small Californian town. Her husband is a keen cyclist and all round competitive dad. She’s actively involved in their children’s lives, taking her daughter to piano lessons, and helping with a performance of The Pied Piper at her youngest son’s school. It’s an ordinary, somewhat unremarkable family dynamic. And then nuclear war breaks out.

TESTAMENT takes a very different approach to many of the other nuclear war films you might have seen. There are barely any special effects – no blast waves or mushroom clouds, just a few seconds of intense white light that interrupt a kid’s TV programme. Other than the fact that Carol’s husband doesn’t return home that night, for the family at the centre of this story, life limps on without any sign of the firestorms and chaos that would no doubt have devastated much of everywhere else. Rehearsals for the school play continue. The townsfolk meet regularly in the church to pool resources and information. There’s a little looting, but law and order is generally maintained. For these folks, there’s little immediate indication that their lives are necessarily over.

And then it hits you.

There are deaths – initially met with great emotion, but as more and more people succumb, their passing is accepted with little more than a shrug. The warm sun of the opening scenes is replaced by darkness – wet streets and dead lawns. There are growing piles of debris. Cars rust on the roads, abandoned. The doctors and lawmakers run out of answers to people’s questions. People leave the town in the vain hope of life being better elsewhere, and they never return – missing, presumed dead. It’s a tough watch. Not THREADS-level tough, but still impactful.

My kids are all grown up now and have left home. When I first watched TESTAMENT, they were still young. As a parent, you instinctively want to be able to protect your children and provide for them, and I remember being deeply affected by Carol’s struggle as she did everything she could to keep her family safe. Theirs is the film’s central story, and it’s devastating. It’s no coincidence that the children at school are performing The Pied Piper, with its theme of kids being let down by their parents. Despite Carol’s best efforts, there’s nothing she can do to prevent the inevitable.

TESTAMENT isn’t for everyone, but if you have an interest in films about nuclear war, I recommend you seek it out. It’s simple and straightforward, but what it lacks in scale and bombast, it more than makes up for in raw emotion.