Testament

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: B-     Film: B-

 

 

In the 1970s, television films were so great that many got theatrical releases.  This is very rare now, especially with all the straight-to-video junk coming to home video stores.  In 1979, PBS’ American Playhouse made a remarkable little film called Testament, which Paramount released in 1983 as concerns about renewed antagonism between The United States and former Soviet Union were on the climb.

 

The film was remarkable for several reasons.  The talent was top rate, including the book source The Last Testament by Carol Amen, the script adaptation by John Sacret Young and behind the scenes work by co-producer/director Lynne Littman.  Only rivaled by the somewhat similar, underrated, and more abstract Julie Christie film Memoirs Of A Survivor (1981, out on DVD), this is a very striking story of how one woman deals with the problems that result from nuclear bombs being dropped.  Whereas the Christie character is alone, Carol Wetherly (Jane Alexander, in a powerful performance) has a husband and three children.  One day, at home watching television with her children while her husband (William Devane) is out of town, a nuclear bomb is dropped nearby.  That is the very beginning of a very slow decline and deterioration that her entire family must suffer.

 

The father is not heard from, the TV suddenly issues alerts, people begin to lose radio contact with other people and people in the small town they live in do not even initially absorb what is going on fully, though some have the best of intensions.  Her children (including a young, unknown Lukas Haas; also look for cameos by Kevin Costner, Mako and Rebecca De Mornay) have an even greater time grasping it al, but it is established early on that this is an exceptionally functional family whose parents are very loving, and that even they would have problems as well raised as the children are.  Littman is good on such detail throughout and the little pains all have to go through as life gets worse and worse.  That makes the film better and better, which is why it endures.  It is well worth seeing again.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is fairly good, considering this was originally shot for TV, with the cinematographer Steven Poster, A.S.C. (Donnie Darko) pulling off a look that exceeds what one would expect for a telefilm.  It always looks like it is somewhere between the agricultural past of America and an America fading figuratively and visually, due to its inability to deal with nuclear armaments.  It forwards the story well and helps Littman tilt this as far away for the Science Fiction genre as possible.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is not bad for its age and a bit richer than we have heard from Paramount lately, and includes an early score by the now well-known James Horner.  Extras include no trailers, but two featurettes: Testament at 20, Testament: Nuclear Thoughts and a text segment that plays a crawl of all the major events since the bomb became a reality and that we are going backwards since the events of 9/11/01.  Soon after this DVD was produced, Russia announced they had developed a nuclear missile that is so outstanding in its tracking that it can fly hundreds and hundreds of miles, all below radar, making the second President Bush’s revival of Ronald Reagan’s inane and insane SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) project that would shoot such missiles out of the air from space further obsolete.  It never worked, new technology never improved it and no adjustment can deal with all the nuclear radiation such a “defense” system would cause to reign all over the planet.  The reissuing of Testament could not have come at a better time.  When Haas’ character asks when the electric will come back on, I realized that The Internet that is designed to withstand nuclear attack would be moot if you did not have the power to run it.  The film has dated better than expected.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo