Testament takes place in a small California
town near San Francisco. It’s an
ordinary day like any other, as Tom Wetherly, played by William Devane, bids
farewell to his wife, Carol Wetherly, played by Jane Alexander and their kids,
as he heads off to work in the city. He will never return, as before that day
ends, nuclear war breaks out and San Francisco
is incinerated
At first, despite being cut off from the outside world and with no
electricity, everything seems eerily normal. But then, as the fallout comes,
one by one everybody starts to die. Here Jane Alexander does an Oscar winning
turn of stoicism, broken only once by the flame bit where she has to give up
the body of one of her children when she calls down the curse of God to all
those who did this. Mako does a good performance as a man who survived Hiroshima
but will not survive this. Kevin Costner, then an up and comer, has a cameo
performance.
Slowly, inexorably, the town and its people die. The sequence is broken up
by home movie style footage of what normal life was like before the war, to
show what was lost. Finally, unable to take it anymore, Carol decides to end it
all with her one surviving child and an orphan they had taken in. But, at the
last minute, she decides not to take the easy way out. It is a moment of quiet
courage in the midst of utter desolation and despair.