MovieChat Forums > Testament (1984) Discussion > Most Depressing Scene

Most Depressing Scene


For me at least, it's the painfully short shot of the playground and the unused swing sets, because there are no more children to play on them.

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For me, when Scotty died. Poor boy...
But the movie itself is depressing!

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It's been a very long time since I saw this film, but I have a vague memory of the mother making a funeral shroud for one her children.

Won't somebody please think of the children?!?

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yeah the scene was when you see the mom sewing and you come to realize it is a burial shroud for her daughter.....it is an overall realistic and depressing portrayal of what could have happened..... I remember growing up in the 80s the tension and very realistic threat of nuclear war......


this is a great movie...

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In the midst of a depressing movie, that is a tough one -- probably the car scene in the garage, where Carol says "I can't do it."

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The whole movie was depressing the one that brought alot of tears to my eyes is when she is rocking scottie in the rocking chair and it cuts to a scene with hime riding a bike with that child like music in the background and he rides toward the camera and stops and waves to it as if he saying goodbye and the music stops. I just about bursted in to tears

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I agree that the car scene in the garage is the most truly depressing. The scenes where she nurses and loses her children are tough but inevitable. however, knowing that she has born so much tragedy already and is trying to spare her last child and the handicapped boy a slow and painful death in an increasingly horrendous and filthy world--- but then simply can't do it and makes the choice to continue living the nightmare knowing she may die before the children is almost too much to handle. It didn't make me cry, but it made me feel sick.

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I laughed my ass off at this film because this film like others of its' kind don't tell you why the nukes went off, they just assume people don't care about life to not press the "button".

Guess what, every living thing (except cockroaches, of course, they're immortal ) have almost been wiped off this planet multiple times because human beings aren't cyborgs from the future, they *gasp* make mistakes and technology fails.

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/5-cold-war-close-calls

Protocol demanded that Serpukhov-15 report any signs of a missile launch to the Soviet high command, but Petrov had a hunch the warning was an error. He knew the new satellite system was mistake-prone, and he also reasoned that any nuclear strike by the Americans would come in the form of hundreds of missiles, not just five. With only minutes to make a decision, Petrov chose to ignore the blaring warning alarms and reported the launch as a false alarm—a move that may have averted a nuclear holocaust.

There's dozens of other examples. I actually *like* that this movie didn't spend 20 minutes showing the cliched nuclear bomb blasts or generals screaming at each other or B-52's flying over Russia or any of that totally cliched stuff. *Why* the nuclear blasts happened is irrelevant to this movie, it's about a family and the town they live and it's a much better movie for it.

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I agree, I saw the movie years ago and that is the scene that comes to my memory first. What a movie, and what a performance.

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Oh it was so sad after 1 child would die you would see that home video of the birthday party and another sad part was when she found batteries in the answering machine and she heard her mother's and husband's messages :(

Man this movie was so so freakin sad!

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For me, the most depressing scene and the one that had the largest impact on my first viewing back in the 80's was the scene where Kevin Costner is carrying the drawer from an antique dresser. The conversation makes no sense except the sense of dread that he seems to be carrying with him. When he speaks the line "She'll fit in here", we realise that his baby has died and he has been looking for something to bury her in. This shock realisation and the sense of impending doom for the rest of the cast was the scene that did it for me.

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Oh it was so sad after 1 child would die you would see that home video of the birthday party and another sad part was when she found batteries in the answering machine and she heard her mother's and husband's messages :(


What struck me about this scene was, she hears her husband's voice, and you know she is thinking..." I so want to keep this reminder of him....but the flashlight needs batteries."

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For me its when they are getting ready to bury Scottie. the mom is looking franticly for his bear and can't find it. the priest proceeds to start and she yells no one will touch him until his bear is found. My eyes swelled up when she said that. i could feel the sadness for her.

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I thought the most depressing scene was when the mother was talking to her daughter about sex. The girl asked what sex was like, and the mom gave her an honest explanation, both of knowing that the girl wouldn't live very long. Then when it cuts to the scene where the mother is sewing and you see she's making a burial shroud for her daughter.

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I saw this film when it came to cinemas in Australia in 1984 and it rocked me. I watched it again tonight, and now being a dad the film cuts in so deep it's painful. What a movie ! For me the most depressing scene would have to be the one where the teenage daughter realises she will never get to love someone.

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That and Lukas Haas pooping in the water. Really, the director should have exploited Lukas' lack of bodily control for the movie.

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I wanted to put this movie in poopy water.

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I laughed my ass off at this film because this film like others of its' kind don't tell you why the nukes went off, they just assume people don't care about life to not press the "button".

Terminator was more believable than this crap. In fact, in a recent documentary on the History channel, scientists agreed that a scenario like an AI that controls the military is more likely to kill us than for massive nuclear war started by humans.








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America put the "fun" back into "Fundamentalism".

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Give it up already! Do us all a favor and go watch your beloved Terminator movies and be happy!

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Put yourself in poopy water moron.

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It was blood.

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the scene where she learns the neighbors baby has died. the scene where her youngest son dies. the scene where she's burying her daughter. the scene where the daughter get's yelled at for feeding a stray cat. because animals would suffer to. and the ending, the mother is sick so she's going to die soon to. when they show the flash backs to happier times.

my cat will rule the world!

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The scene where Alexander's character was singing lullabies to Scottie before he died. I cried during the rest of movie.

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i cried too.. at the end of the movie.. for wasting 2 hours of my life..that i will NEVER EVER GET BACK!


poop treasures.

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i couldn't agree more with jtpaladin .. they give no insight as to why it happened wich depresses me more than all of these post put together.. least in the day after it was russias fault for invading germany....

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Once it has happened, it doesn't really matter why it happened, does it? The result is the same -- life as we know it ends. It's not as if there's anyone left to take revenge.

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The home movie at the very end. It shows the family in happier times gathered in that one part of the backyard, which is a callback to earlier in the movie where you see that is where the children end up being buried.

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"For me at least, it's the painfully short shot of the playground and the unused swing sets, because there are no more children to play on them."

For me the most depressing scene was the one least expected. Jane Alexander's character thinks her husband might have made it out of San Francisco before the bomb was dropped. She clings to hope that maybe just maybe he was on his way home.

But about 2/3rds of the way through the film she picks up the answering machine because she needs the batteries from it. She accidentally hits one of the buttons on it and her husband's voice comes on saying he had to head back to the office and he would not be heading home early that day.

It's then she realizes he isn't coming home.

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