Silkwood (1983)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

Mike Nichols

Writers:

Nora Ephron (written by) &
Alice Arlen (written by)

Release Date:

14 December 1983 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

On November 13, 1974, Karen Silkwood, an employee of a nuclear facility, left to meet with a reporter from the New York Times. She never got there.

Plot:

The story of Karen Silkwood, a metallurgy worker at a plutonium processing plant who was purposefully contaminated, psychologically tortured and possibly murdered to prevent her from exposing blatant worker safety violations at the plant.

Plot Keywords:

Nuclear Plant | Oklahoma | Lesbian | Nuclear Power | Indian Joke

Awards:

Nominated for 5 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 7 nominations

Cast

Meryl Streep	...	Karen Silkwood
Kurt Russell	...	Drew Stephens
Cher	...	Dolly Pelliker
Craig T. Nelson	...	Winston
Fred Ward	...	Morgan
Diana Scarwid	...	Angela
Ron Silver	...	Paul Stone
Charles Hallahan	...	Earl Lapin
Josef Sommer	...	Max Richter
Sudie Bond	...	Thelma Rice
Henderson Forsythe	...	Quincy Bissell
E. Katherine Kerr	...	Gilda Schultz
Bruce McGill	...	Mace Hurley
David Strathairn	...	Wesley
J.C. Quinn	...	Curtis Schultz

Runtime:

131 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:M | Iceland:16 | Singapore:NC-16 | Argentina:18 | Chile:18 | Finland:K-12 | Sweden:11 | UK:15 | USA:R | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Company:

ABC Motion Pictures

Trivia:

The scene where Silkwood set off the radiation alarms actually happened. Her level of contamination was forty times the safe limit.

Goofs:

Continuity: When the house is plundered by men looking for radiation, Karen and Dolly are questioned and then Dolly is taken away. But not long afterward, in a close shot of Karen, you can see Dolly in the background.

Quotes:

[on the deceased former workers of a nuclear plant]
Angela: They all look as though they died before they were dead.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Will & Grace: Gypsies, Tramps and Weed (#3.7)" (2000)

Soundtrack:

Pretty Little Horses Lullaby

America the beautiful

The lives of working class Americans are shamefully under-represented by Hollywood, and when a poor person is depicted (as something other than a criminal), it's almost always with the subtext of hope and the American dream. But hope isn't what drives someone, like the real-life Karen Silkwood, to risk her life working with plutonium for the only employer in a company town. Silkwood didn't find hope, but she did get scared, and angry, and put her job (and those of her colleagues) at stake to uncover dangerous practices before dying a mysterious death. 'Silkwood' the movie doesn't give us the glib conclusions of a conspiracy thriller (it refrains from giving an opinion on her cause of death), but it does give an excellent portrait of life at the bottom, and the mounting sense of claustrophobia and paranoia that accompanied Karen's perilous voyage of discovery. Meryl Streep does an excellent job in the title role, portraying a woman gradually losing her sanity, and the whole cast is good, even Cher in an unglamorous role. In conclusion, this is a serious and important film; and a reminder for the fortunate how hard, and ugly, life can be, even in the "land of the free".