Testament

Hamlin is a small American town. Carol Wetherly lives there with her three children; her husband commutes to San Francisco. School in the morning, dinner in the evening, a school play at the weekend. One afternoon the television broadcast is interrupted and an announcement is made: there have been explosions on the east coast. Then the screen goes dark. The town takes no physical damage; the blast was far away. But the telephones do not work, there is no electricity, the petrol runs out and her husband does not come back. Over the following weeks people begin to fall ill. Lynne Littman directs. Jane Alexander plays Carol; William Devane is in the cast. It was made for television and then shown in cinemas; Jane Alexander was nominated for an Oscar for the part. The film's choice is not to show the explosion; the narrative uses no mushroom cloud or images of destruction anywhere. The narrative stays with one family and one town; the cause, who started it and what happened in the world are never described. Its hardest section is the children falling ill and the narrative softens it nowhere. What is most striking is the keeping up of ceremony and habit while the town's daily order breaks down. It is counted among the plainest of the films made about nuclear war. Who it is for: viewers who like drama built on nuclear threat and plain telling. Who it is not for: the subject is extremely heavy, there is no hope, and the sections about the children are very hard to watch.