Testament: In the Twilight

The horror of Testament is so astonishingly effective because it springs from a believable domestic day-to-day. It’s a film that haunts in part because of its unerring authenticity, even if its speculative story could be considered science fiction. Anyone who has witnessed Testament has surely never forgotten it. Before I ever saw it, I remember, as a child, hearing my mother whisper its title like an awful secret; when she spoke of it, she wore an ashen expression usually reserved for the relating of a family tragedy. She had seen the film when it first aired on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1984, some months after its theatrical release in November 1983. Its status as forbidden object only enhanced my childhood curiosity. When I finally did manage to watch it—surreptitiously, out of parental eyeshot—its horrors were crystal clear, as were the reasons my mom wanted to shield me from it. Watching Testament as a child was a loss of innocence.

The opening passages of Testament are as realistic an evocation of white, middle-class California suburbia as can be seen in any film from the 1980s. The era’s consumerist trappings are everywhere: a mini-TV droning in the kitchen; the kids’ Fisher-Price record player spinning on the counter; a boom box blasting a cassette of Jane Fonda’s Workout, prodding mom Carol Wetherly (Jane Alexander) to get out of bed and plan for the day. The household is all chaos, the normal kind that will seem downright paradisiacal just twenty-four hours later: domestic annoyances over spilled milk and not enough toilet paper, minor-key marital squabbles between Carol and Tom (William Devane). Husband and wife will only have one moment of true intimacy, in bed in the middle of the night, when Carol relates her concerns about their son Brad’s upcoming birthday. Larger, if diffuse, stress points creep into the conversation—soon the boy will be old enough for the military draft. Despite such latent parental anxieties, and a simmering discontent already traceable in Alexander’s exquisitely unsentimental performance, there’s a beautifully drawn ease to Carol and Tom’s extended interaction here, making it even more dispiriting when, the next morning, Tom goes off to work with no fanfare—no kiss, no farewell—and never returns.

The beginning of the end of the world: Carol, daughter Mary Liz (Roxana Zal), and little Scottie (Lukas Haas) are watching a staticky Sesame Street, while middle child Brad (Ross Harris) tries to straighten the antenna to correct the image. The program is interrupted by an emergency broadcast alert matter-of-factly announcing detonations in New York and up and down the East Coast, and advising that telephone lines should be kept open “for official use.” The U.S. presidential seal appears, and, almost as quickly, the television zaps out. No address from the president, but the message is clear: this is a world in which official leadership is already a thing of the past. Then the blinding light, a wail of sirens, and the neighbors are convening on the street. A sad-eyed kid from next door, Larry (Mico Olmos), all alone, will ask Carol if he can stay with them until his parents return from San Francisco. Another neighbor, the elderly Henry (Leon Ames, from Meet Me in St. Louis and TV’s Life with Father, in a casting twist of the knife), will cling to hope via his ham radio, the community’s only connection to whatever is left of the outside world. We only know what they come to know: San Francisco’s gone silent; the nukes may have hit Yosemite. Spared the initial blast, they at first believe themselves to be the lucky ones. The remainder of the film slowly, incrementally, horribly refutes this.