Also in the cast are Philip Anglim and Rebecca de Mornay in small but effective roles, and Ross Harris, Roxana Zal and Lukas Haas, who perform touchingly as the doomed children. Devane are convincing as both longtime spouses and suburbanites and since the down-to-earth qualities of both stars contribute to the homespun feeling of the drama. The casting is particularly adroit, since Miss Alexander and Mr.
Miss Littman, who directed and was co-producer of ''Testament,'' gives its individual scenes a very realistic air, even if the film's overall conception is sometimes strained. For the most part, they just persevere quietly and wait for the worst. Nor do the people of Hamelin have much of an opportunity to voice grief, panic, rage or any other of the emotions they might be expected to have. The screenplay never specifies which country pressed the button, for instance, or what events in world politics led up to this terrible turn of events. This is all plausible, but what's missing is a corresponding attention to larger issues. Famine sets in, and there are long, long lines for gasoline. The garbage, for instance, is no longer collected. The short story upon which the film is based (''The Last Testament,'' by Carol Amen) hasn't room for many such details, but John Sacret Young's screenplay develops quite a number of them. When ''Testament'' presents a mother burying a tiny corpse that has been wrapped in a child's gaily printed sheet, it is at its most unsettlingly plausible. The best she can do is sit quietly by as the after-effects of the nuclear explosions manifest themselves, images that the film sometimes presents very powerfully indeed. She cannot be hopeful, since there is nothing to hope for. Meanwhile, Carol (Jane Alexander) remains as sturdy as she can for the sake of the couple's daughter and two sons. Tom (William Devane), the gung-ho dad who has gone on a business trip to San Francisco, has not been heard from since the awful moment when the Wetherlys' television reception was interrupted and their living room suffused with a bright orange glow. The first half of ''Testament,'' the section describing the family's usual life, is contrasted with post-holocaust scenes, in which the Wetherlys watch the slow, grim decline of their community. Yet the very drabness of this day takes on poignancy when seen in the light of what follows.
#The testaments movie rating full#
For the Wetherly family, around whom the film revolves, the quintessentially humdrum day before the catastrophe is full of errands and squabbles and dirty laundry. In her effort to drive home the human cost of such a calamity, Miss Littman concentrates on the most ordinary details of life in a California town. THE strategy of Lynne Littman's disturbing ''Testament'' is to depict the most enormous of disasters - a nuclear holocaust - in terms that are comparatively banal.