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.