5. Testament (1983)
Originally produced for American station PBS, Testament was deemed good enough to be given a theatrical release. The story concerns a small San Franciscan bay town that has survived a deluge of Soviet nukes upon America but finds itself falling apart after outside society disintegrates, Another really depressing nuclear war movie, when I watched this one - I blubbered like a baby with the worst case of colic. Again, attention is paid to character development. We want the characters to somehow find a way out of this utterly impossible situation, but they are up against the greatest odds there could be, and ultimately doomed. The character of Carol (Jane Alexander) loses her husband, a son, sees the town crack up due to fall out poisoning and looting, adopts a retarded Japanese child called Hiroshi (a nod to Hiroshima?), contemplates suicide but backs out and faces an uncertain future. The film is more about surviving rather than rebuilding in the face of a nuclear war and I think this is a far more realistic assessment of life after a nuclear holocaust. Jane Alexander thoroughly deserved her Oscar nomination. The film, made in the same year as The Day After, does not need graphic explosions and mushroom clouds to make its point.