The Long Goodbye of Lynne Littman’s ‘Testament’

Included with Criterion’s recent re-release of Testament, Lynne Littman’s 1983 film depicting a nuclear holocaust from the perspective of a small town in California, is a short feature called ‘“Testament” at 20’. Filmed in 2003, it’s the sort of short retrospective piece found on many DVD and Blu-ray releases, one highlighted by scenes of the actors who played young siblings in the film—Ross Harris, Lukas Haas, and Roxana Zal—reuniting at Littman’s home. Littman and the cast members play catch up and trade memories of ancient crushes and memorable days on set and for just about any other film, there wouldn’t be anything that remarkable about seeing them together again. But it’s different with Testament, in which two of the characters they play don’t survive to the end of the movie and the third seems destined to meet a similarly grim fate, events Littman’s film depicts so harrowingly that it’s almost shocking to see members of the cast alive and well. 

Originally produced for the PBS series American Playhouse, Testament was first released to theaters in November of 1983, mere weeks before the debut of The Day After. That Nicholas Meyer-directed TV movie tells a similar story, dramatizing the lead-up to and aftermath of a nuclear war as seen from the American heartland. Yet, though superficially similar and born of the same early ’80s anxieties about intensifying nuclear tensions, there’s no mistaking one for another. The Day After’s focus is local. Testament’s is microscopic. Littman restricts the action to the tiny radius of Hamelin, California and limits its nuclear blast to a blinding flash of light as seen from a single living room. But what follows is no less devastating. Late in the film, we see a few shots of streets lined with broken-down cars that have been stripped for parts and other images of post-apocalyptic waste. But the film’s really about how the death and disruption of a nuclear attack plays out within the walls an ordinary American family calls home.

The Wetherly house buzzes with mundane family tensions in Testament’s opening scenes. Tom (William Devane) pressures his son Brad (Harris) to join him on a demanding bicycle ride and isn’t always sensitive when he talks to his wife Carol (Jane Alexander). Teenaged Mary Liz (Zal) seems perpetually annoyed about something or other. The youngest, Scottie (Haas), feeds his He-Man figures cereal he should be eating himself. Then, without warning, a newscaster interrupts the afternoon’s TV broadcast to announce that the East Coast has been hit by nuclear missiles. Everything will change forever.