Jane Alexander and William Devane play Carol and Tom Wetherly, a couple with three children living a comfortable middle-class life in a San Francisco suburb. They have three children - an oldest girl, Mary Liz, who is about 15 and two younger boys, Brad (about to turn 13) and Scottie, who is about 6. Tom commutes to work in San Francisco. One day Tom calls to say that he'll be coming home early, but then the news is interrupted by a report that communications with several East Coast cities have ceased amid reports of nuclear attacks. And from the direction of San Francisco there is a blinding flash of light.
Initially, Carol, tries to maintain the fiction that Tom is just on his way home and will arrive soon, but as time passes it becomes clear he's never going to return. She and the remaining survivors find themselves in a world without clean running water, electricity, or anywhere to obtain food. One of their neighbors has a generator-powered ham radio which he uses to try to contact any other communities of survivors, but over time such contacts dwindle as well.
Slowly, the lack of food and radiation poisoning begin to take their toll. As characters die, there is a brief clip of them in an 8 mm home movie in times before the attack. Eventually, they take in Hiroshi, a mentally handicapped boy whose parents have died. Some neighbors take their own lives by using the last of their gasoline to asphyxiate themselves with car exhaust. Carol initially wants to take that way out, but is unable to go through with it.
At the end, with food running low, the makeshift family gathers for Brad's 13th birthday. Instead of a cake, Carol has only small squares of graham cracker with a dollop of peanut butter on each to hold a candles.
In a scene lit only with the light of the birthday candles, she tells Brad, "Make a wish." When he asks what he should wish for, she responds, "To remember everything . . . The good and the awful. The way we finally lived. That we never gave up. That we will last . . . To be here. To deserve the children." They each blow out the one candle in front of them, and we see another brief 8 mm film clip of the whole Wetherly family at an earlier, happier birthday party.
Carol's last line may seem a bit perplexing, telling Brad to "deserve the children." The origin of the line may be hard to place, but it hearkens back to a school play based on the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin that Carol was directing at the time the bomb dropped. (The play was chosen because the town in the legend, Hamelin, has almost the same name as the town where they live, Hamlin.) Shortly after the attack, the people of Hamlin decide to have the children perform the play as a way of building community and keeping up everyone's spirits.
In the story, the Pied PIper is hired to rid the town of rats, which he does by charming them with his pipe and leading them into a river where they drown. But the town reneged on its promise to pay him, so he then the Piper used his pipe to lure away all of the town's children into a cave where they disappeared -- all but one lame child left behind because he couldn't keep up with the others. Because this was an elementary school play, though, the lame child -- played in their play by Carol's son Scottie -- stands before the audience to say that the children will be returned one day when the townspeople are ready "to deserve them."
"Testament" is so powerful precisely because it is understated. There is no devastation -- no wrecked buildings and no mushroom cloud. Instead, it is a bleak portrayal of a community trying to hold together until, finally, all hope breaks down and the people are left to ponder their little time left -- and perhaps to ask whether, in a world that allows such things to happen, they "deserve the children" who will never grow up.
All of the actors provide competent performances -- except, perhaps, a young and clearly inexperienced Kevin Costner in an early role. (Indeed, at roughly the same time, his part in "The Big Chill" as the suicidal character, Alex, whose death brings his college friends together for his funeral, had just been left literally on the cutting room floor.) His acting here is fairly wooden, but he would go on to much bigger things.
Still, the anchor that holds this movie together is Jane Alexander's performance as Carol. She is sensitive, resolute, and in the way of so many women with children, does what she can to hold her family together in the face of an increasingly desperate, and finally hopeless situation. She earned the film its only Oscar nomination, and it's easy to see why -- she is gentle with her children and those around her, yet she projects a flintiness and resolution that carries the others to the film's bleak, yet unforgettably moving conclusion.
Initially, Carol, tries to maintain the fiction that Tom is just on his way home and will arrive soon, but as time passes it becomes clear he's never going to return. She and the remaining survivors find themselves in a world without clean running water, electricity, or anywhere to obtain food. One of their neighbors has a generator-powered ham radio which he uses to try to contact any other communities of survivors, but over time such contacts dwindle as well.
Slowly, the lack of food and radiation poisoning begin to take their toll. As characters die, there is a brief clip of them in an 8 mm home movie in times before the attack. Eventually, they take in Hiroshi, a mentally handicapped boy whose parents have died. Some neighbors take their own lives by using the last of their gasoline to asphyxiate themselves with car exhaust. Carol initially wants to take that way out, but is unable to go through with it.
At the end, with food running low, the makeshift family gathers for Brad's 13th birthday. Instead of a cake, Carol has only small squares of graham cracker with a dollop of peanut butter on each to hold a candles.
In a scene lit only with the light of the birthday candles, she tells Brad, "Make a wish." When he asks what he should wish for, she responds, "To remember everything . . . The good and the awful. The way we finally lived. That we never gave up. That we will last . . . To be here. To deserve the children." They each blow out the one candle in front of them, and we see another brief 8 mm film clip of the whole Wetherly family at an earlier, happier birthday party.
Carol's last line may seem a bit perplexing, telling Brad to "deserve the children." The origin of the line may be hard to place, but it hearkens back to a school play based on the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin that Carol was directing at the time the bomb dropped. (The play was chosen because the town in the legend, Hamelin, has almost the same name as the town where they live, Hamlin.) Shortly after the attack, the people of Hamlin decide to have the children perform the play as a way of building community and keeping up everyone's spirits.
In the story, the Pied PIper is hired to rid the town of rats, which he does by charming them with his pipe and leading them into a river where they drown. But the town reneged on its promise to pay him, so he then the Piper used his pipe to lure away all of the town's children into a cave where they disappeared -- all but one lame child left behind because he couldn't keep up with the others. Because this was an elementary school play, though, the lame child -- played in their play by Carol's son Scottie -- stands before the audience to say that the children will be returned one day when the townspeople are ready "to deserve them."
"Testament" is so powerful precisely because it is understated. There is no devastation -- no wrecked buildings and no mushroom cloud. Instead, it is a bleak portrayal of a community trying to hold together until, finally, all hope breaks down and the people are left to ponder their little time left -- and perhaps to ask whether, in a world that allows such things to happen, they "deserve the children" who will never grow up.
All of the actors provide competent performances -- except, perhaps, a young and clearly inexperienced Kevin Costner in an early role. (Indeed, at roughly the same time, his part in "The Big Chill" as the suicidal character, Alex, whose death brings his college friends together for his funeral, had just been left literally on the cutting room floor.) His acting here is fairly wooden, but he would go on to much bigger things.
Still, the anchor that holds this movie together is Jane Alexander's performance as Carol. She is sensitive, resolute, and in the way of so many women with children, does what she can to hold her family together in the face of an increasingly desperate, and finally hopeless situation. She earned the film its only Oscar nomination, and it's easy to see why -- she is gentle with her children and those around her, yet she projects a flintiness and resolution that carries the others to the film's bleak, yet unforgettably moving conclusion.