The movie The Testament depicts the aftermath of an
atomic war with the Soviet Union as experienced by one small city
in Northern California. The movie opens with us being introduced
to the main family as they go about their daily morning activities
in the tranquil atmosphere of the small town. The main family
consist of the dad who commutes to work in San Francisco, the
mom who is a full time mother of three and active at her youngest
sons' school, the oldest son and oldest daughter who are both
preadolescents and the youngest son who is about 7 or 8. The
day proceeds routinely until mid afternoon when a sudden loss
of the television signal followed by a few sketchy Emergency Broadcast
Transmission seems to indicate that something is very wrong.
After a few more moments the signal to the TV is loss entirely
and the mother is able to deduce that there could possibly have
been a nuclear war. Huddling the children together her suspicions
are soon confirmed by long-lasting bright flashes of an eerie
green light. The remainder of the movie deals with the aftermath
of the atomic war and the debilitating and deadly consequences
of nuclear fallout as one by one our main family members succumb
to death. Eventually people begin dying by the dozens throughout
the town with the youngest of the town dying first. The movie
also depicts some of the emotional and psychological stress of
the townspeople as they deal with the breakdown of the established
social structure and death of their loved ones.
In assessing my personal reactions to the movie, I was not
very moved by the emotional content of the film. Although I found
the movie to be scientifically correct in that radiation from
the nuclear fallout had the most adverse effects on the youngest,
followed by the elderly I did not find the emotional reaction
of the survivors to be very realistic. While I do realize that
it may perhaps be impossible to truly assess the kind of emotional
reaction people would have in this sort of "impending death"
scenario, the responses of some of the surviving town members
seemed thoroughly unconvincing. One part of the movie, however,
I found convincing was the feeling of isolation brought on by
the atomic destruction. In the wake of the atomic blast all the
major forms of communication were taken out since most likely
they were based in San Francisco. The feeling of being stuck
on the proverbial "desert island", I felt was a very
real and indeed frightening aspect of the atomic disaster. What's
more, is that that same feeling of loneliness and isolation compounded
with the overbearing sense of impending death is likened to being
very small flame about to be snuffed out at the end of the world.