Silkwood

The real-life Karen Silkwood was an employee at an Oklahoma nuclear facility who died in a mysterious car accident while driving to talk with a New York Times reporter about safety practices in 1973. Her story was told in this 1983 film directed by Mike Nichols and starring Meryl Streep as Silkwood, a divorced mother and blue collar employee—living with her boyfriend (Kurt Russell) and best friend (Cher)—who begins to document company accidents and safety violations after a colleague is contaminated. Silkwood is as much about the lives of workers on and off the job as it is about corners cut by the company when the employees are forced to put in overtime to make a deadline. The hostility against Silkwood's recordkeeping may be encouraged by plant managers here but it is rooted in the fear of losing jobs in an economically-depressed region. The workers must also endure decontamination protocols that are both brutal and humiliating while coping with the potential horrors of radiation contamination, and even alarm that the company may be poisoning possible whistleblowers (suggested if not actually stated here). Nichols draws rich, naturalistic performances from the entire cast (which includes Craig T. Nelson, Diana Scarwid, Fred Ward, and Ron Silver) as he creates a kind of true horror story when Silkwood discovers that she has become contaminated. Silkwood was nominated for five Academy Awards, including direction, acting (Streep, Cher), editing, and original screenplay (by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen), and Cher won a Golden Globe for her supporting performance. Extras include an interview with producer Michael Hausman. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)