Testament is a 1983 American post-apocalyptic drama film co-produced and directed by Lynne Littman, written by John Sacret Young, and starring Jane Alexander, William Devane, Leon Ames, Ross Harris, Lukas Haas, Roxana Zal, Kevin Costner, and Rebecca De Mornay. Based on Carol Amen's 1981 short story "The Last Testament", the film focuses on the disintegration of a small suburban community in the San Francisco Bay Area after nuclear war destroys outside civilization. Originally produced for the PBS series American Playhouse, it was given a theatrical release instead by Paramount Pictures on November 4, 1983 (although PBS did subsequently air it a year later). Alexander was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
Plot The Wetherly family—husband Tom, wife Carol, and children Brad, Mary Liz, and Scottie—live in the fictional suburb of Hamelin, California, north of Santa Rosa. Tom, the breadwinner, works in San Francisco, 60 miles south. On a routine afternoon, Carol listens to an answering machine message from Tom saying he is on his way home for dinner. Scottie watches Sesame Street on TV when the show is suddenly replaced by white noise; after a few seconds, a San Francisco news anchor appears onscreen, saying they have lost their New York signal and there are radar indications of explosions of "nuclear devices up and down the East Coast." The anchorman is cut off by the Emergency Broadcast System tone. An announcer's voice states that the White House is interrupting the program, but the blinding flash of a nuclear detonation is seen through the window and the broadcast goes dead. The family huddles on the floor in panic as the town's air-raid sirens go off; minutes later, several of their neighbors are seen running around on the street outside, dazed in fear and confusion. The family tries to remain calm, hoping Tom is safe. Hamelin seems to survive relatively unscathed. Frightened residents meet at the home of Henry Abhart, an elderly ham radio operator. He has made contact with survivors in rural areas, such as Keokuk, Iowa and Yosemite National Park (affected by a nearby nuclear blast), but reveals that the entire Bay Area and all major U.S. cities are radio-silent. Larry, a local boy who lost his parents, moves in with the Wetherleys but succumbs to radiation poisoning. The school play about the Pied Piper of Hamelin was in rehearsal before the bombings; desperate to recapture some normality, the town decides to go on with the show. The parents smile and applaud, many of them in tears. The day after the attack, the children noticed contaminated fallout dirt settling on solid surfaces as a result of the blast. Residents now have to cope with losing municipal services, food and gas shortages, and the loss of loved ones to radiation poisoning. Scottie, the first to succumb, is buried in the backyard because cemeteries are overwhelmed; Carol frantically searches for his teddy bear as the local priest prepares for his interment. As the dead accumulate faster than the manpower to bury them, wooden caskets are used as fuel for funeral pyres later, and Carol sews together a burial shroud from bedsheets for Mary Liz, who also dies from radiation exposure. While the young die, older residents fall to rapid dementia, and order in the town starts to break down as police and firefighter ranks dwindle. With no one to renovate homes and no purpose to do so, properties, roads, and the physical appearances of survivors steadily deteriorate as radiation poisoning and social disintegration take their toll. A young couple leaves town after losing their infant, hoping to find safety and solace elsewhere. Carol's search for a battery causes her to listen once more to her husband's final message on the answering machine. To her sorrow, she finds a later (and previously unheard) message on the machine from Tom: he decided to stay at work late in San Francisco on the day of the attack, and she gives up hope that he will return home. Brad, Carol's last surviving child, helps his mother and takes over the radio for Henry Abhart. They adopt a mentally-disabled boy named Hiroshi who Tom used to take fishing along with his children after Hiroshi's father, Mike, died. Soon thereafter Carol starts showing signs of radiation poisoning. Carol decides she, Brad, and Hiroshi should avoid a slow and painful death from radiation poisoning and instead take their own lives via carbon monoxide poisoning. They gather in the family's station wagon with the engine running and the garage door closed, but Carol cannot bring herself to go through with the deed. They are finally seen sitting by candlelight to celebrate Brad's birthday, using a graham cracker in place of a cake. When asked what they should wish for, Carol answers: "That we remember it all...the good and the awful." She blows out the candle. An old family home movie of a surprise birthday party for Tom plays, showing him as he blows out the candles on his cake.
Cast
Background
Testament was based upon a three-page short story written by Carol Amen, an American writing teacher whose story was published in the August 1981 issue of Ms. Magazine. Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick of Los Angeles Review of Books traced Amen's story to a number of other 1980s periodical publications, stating, "The appearance of Amen’s “The Last Testament” in [Ms. Magazine] was actually a reprint: the story originally ran in the September 1980 issue of the St. Anthony Messenger, an Ohio-based religious magazine published by the Franciscan Friars, with a circulation of roughly 350,000 in the 1980s. The story was written 14 years prior to the movie's release, according to a feature on Amen that appeared in The San Francisco Examiner in October 1983." Amen died from cancer in 1987; according to an article in The Los Angeles Times released one week before her death, "Mrs. Amen taught writing at area adult schools and colleges. She wrote a three-page story she called “Last Testament” that appeared in print in 1981. It described a family in a small Northern California town and how it coped in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion."
Production Testament was shot entirely on location in the town of Sierra Madre, California, a suburb community of Los Angeles located in the San Gabriel Valley.
Release Testament was theatrically released in the United States on November 4, 1983.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
