TESTAMENT Blu-ray Review: Not With A Bang But A Whimper

In Testament, the world ends, then has the temerity not to die swiftly. We're used to more definitive statements of the end times in cinema: the nuclear holocausts that wipe out billions in an instant in flashbulb explosions up and down the coasts; or the scavenger paradises that evolve their own mutant societies afterwards, replete with road warriors and Lords Humungus.

In Testament, directed by Lynne Littman based on a short story by Carol Amen, the dull reality of nuclear catastrophe trades the mythic for the quotidian. Early in the film, the television sets go noisy for a moment before an emergency broadcast breaks through and cuts off. Then there's a strobing of white light, from everywhere. A family -- mother Carol; teenager Mary Liz; tween Brad and toddler Scottie; Dad is still at work in the city -- huddles in the living room as bomb sirens sound and the walls shake.

The sirens end. The bombs expend their fury, but the immediate damage is far away. The town of Hamelin, somewhere in northern California, is still standing. It's the rest of the world, more or less, that's gone.

What happens next is a slow-motion apocalypse, as Carol (Jane Alexander, Oscar-nominated) tries to keep her brood stable and safe as civilization begins to deteriorate. There's no news service, no national disaster coordination; the only word from other survivors comes by ham radio, operated by the old geezer at the top of the hill. No one knows exactly what they can and can't eat, or what radioactive fallout will and will not do. No one knows who bombed who. It doesn't really matter.

Testament was produced American Playhouse on PBS, but was good enough to merit a theatrical distribution by Paramount Pictures in November 1983. It preceded, by two weeks, Nicholas Meyer's The Day After TV-movie, which was watched by a hundred million people (including an American president whose journals claim the film redirected his thoughts on that country's nuclear strategy).

Nuclear war was on everyone's mind -- to Gen-Xers like me, it's hard to return to an era where nuclear war is on everyone's minds, having grown up in one and (I thought) having left it behind, but I digress -- and this preoccupation shows in the dull fatalism of Testament, which can offer no path to atonement, retribution, or even slender hope.

The film is deadly serious in its subject matter and doggedly unstylish in its presentation, a TV-sized feature film that quietly chronicles the way life bleeds out after a fatal wound, not the spectacle of the wound itself.

Mary Liz asks her mother to tell her what sex is like, realizing that she's never going to experience it for herself. Scottie buries his toys in the church yard, no longer willing to play-feed them the imaginary food his community no longer has. Brad grows into "the man he's never going to become," as his mother puts it, riding his father's racing bike around town to check on the neighbours as they sicken and die.

The film somewhat overvalues, I think, the idea of easy, mutual cooperation after a disaster of this scale (there's a little looting and an occasional burglary, but not much else), but what did they know in 1983? The last pandemic was over sixty years before, and the next one wasn't rolling around for another 40. Littman imagines, instead, an American suburbia as we'd have seen it in E.T. -- a film which had only come out the year before -- slowly turning yellow and dying before us, its cherubic kids-on-bikes becoming dirtier, and smellier, and thinner, till the radiation poison takes them.

Testament is stacked with '80s MVPs: Lukas Haas makes his debut as young Scottie; Kevin Costner and Rebecca DeMornay sport baby faces as a neighbouring couple; and James Horner subtly recreates the Amblin vibe in his unsettlingly childlike score.

Restored in 4K as supervised by Littman and her DOP Steven Poster, Testament comes to the Criterion Collection as spine #1303 (available on Blu-ray only). The image, originated in 35mm, is crisp and bright, with pleasing amounts of grain and a dynamic range (particularly in "candle"-lit night scenes after the power grid has gone down) appropriate to its era of production.

The disc is packed with supplemental features, including a riotous half-hour gab session between Littman and her friend, the author Sam Wasson. Three of Littman's short documentaries are presented as well, including the Oscar-winning Number Our Days. Finally, actor Jane Alexander reads the original short story, "The Last Testament," upon which Testament is based.

Visit the official Criterion Collection site for more information and to place an order.