Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

SnoopyStyle Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep) lives in Oklahoma with her boyfriend Drew Stephens (Kurt Russell) and best friend lesbian Dolly Pelliker (Cher). Her kids live with their father in Texas. The three friends are low-skilled workers at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Site where they manufacture fuel rods for nuclear reactors. With mounting work and lax safety, Karen starts to talk union causing tension with the company. Eventually, she gets mysteriously irradiated.Meryl Streep is the best. She delivers a fully-fleshed out character of real depth. The movie is a bit slow and meandering. It would be great to have a tighter and more direct film. Then there is the final text. It seems like a bunch of stuff from the legal department to safeguard against lawsuits. They may as well fictionalize the movie instead. The performances are terrific. The story is compelling.

ElMaruecan82 Karen Silkwood, casually chewing gum, finishes her working day by a routine cleaning task. She then leaves the room, raises her hand toward the radiation detector, as she always does, but this time, the strident alarm suddenly starts ringing, indicating that she may have been exposed to radiations. Karen tries not to panic although she's visibly shocked. And the scene cuts to the first of her three "cooking" treatments, which in nuclear jargon, means getting into a hot, long and painful decontaminating shower. That very moment is Karen Silkwood's story in microcosm, perfectly reflecting who she was and what she went through. Basically, Karen can't see the danger pending above her frail shoulders. She's not a fool but in a tragically admirable way, she is just blinded by her own integrity. Later in the film, she just enters the door, and the sound startles us again, we have a quick glimpse on the "Danger Radiation" signal, then it cuts to her cries of fear and disbelief under the hot shower, again. The sad irony is that Karen tried to apply some cleansing on the field of ethics, in the Nuclear factory she worked in, but the more she tried, the more tortured she was by the 'invisible enemy'. And the frequency of the shower scenes plays like the omen of a series of misfortunes leading up to a tragic conclusion, the ultimate 'cleaning'. Indeed, we all know that Karen Silkwood died in a mysterious car accident, so the shower scenes, each time more intense and haunting, marks the beginning of the end for Karen Silkwood. But as aware as we are about the facts, there's something in Karen's portrayal by Meryl Streep and in Mike Nichols' sober directing that don't get us prepared to it. Karen is no more idealistic than any other, she lives her life, she jokes and smokes, a lot as a matter of fact, she enjoys flirting, teasing her friends, she's like any small-town girl of her generation. "Silkwood" borrows many elements from 70's dramas like "Serpico", "Norma Rae" or "The China Syndrome", movies featuring ordinary persons, so dedicated to their job they couldn't close their eyes on some unethical practices and made outcasts of themselves by blowing the whistle.Karen belongs to America's struggling, unorganized working class. Her three children live with her ex-husband, and she shares a ramshackle house with her boyfriend Drew and lesbian friend Dolly, superbly played by Kurt Russell and Cher. As to emphasize the fact that the factory nourishes the town, they also happen to be co-workers. Indeed, whether a cotton mill or corporate police, the factory producing plutonium fuel rods for nuclear reactors, is only the setting and the film deals with a sincere austerity a slice of American workers' ordinary lives in a crisis-stricken America, with a more dramatic turn since it's a life-and-death situation, governed by pure profits' motives. When the plant falls into an important contract and workers are forced to work over hours and falsify some records, the effect on their health is perceived as minor collateral damage, a chance even workers are ready to take, because at least, their wages is a valuable certitude. "Silkwood" chronicles Karen's double evolution: her ascension from a worker to a union activist, traveling to Washington, interacting with union officials, testifying before the Energy Atomic Commission and revealing that some records are altered. And in the same time, there's a descent into the outcast status, making her more and more undesirable, but in the meantime, more and more determined to conduct the investigation on her own. Karen died the night she was supposed to give documentation to New York Times reporter but none of it was found in her crushed car, except convenient hints indicating that she was drugged and 'fall in sleep" while driving. From all the previous heroes I mentioned, Silkwood is the most tragic character because she paid the highest price. And what makes the story so heart-breaking is that it's not until it's too late, that she realizes she's been sailing on trouble waters. I'm still haunted by the last shot of Karen blinded by headlights on her rear view mirror. Is she worried, surprised? or does she literally see the light, realizing where her fight has lead up and is probably aware of what's awaiting her? We're only left with our sorrow, sadness and disbelief shared by her co-workers and friends when the crushed car is dragged to town. And it's the bold and abrupt realism that emotionally enhances the film, it's set in 1974, but the feeling is so authentic I felt like it was made in 1974.Nichols' doesn't stylize the film, shot like a documentary. The big corporations aren't vilified as Karen isn't romanticized either. The only time the 'David vs. Goliath' aspect of her fight is hinted is when she looks for retouched negatives of faulty fuel rods and is confronted by Craig T. Nelson. She tells him she's looking for her pills, but the intimidating towering presence of Nelson accentuates Karen's vulnerability and provides the first hints of danger.Realistic dramas like "Silkwood" can only rely on performances and Meryl Streep dilutes herself as Karen Silkwood. She wasn't thirty in "Kramer vs. Kramer" but she conveyed a classy maturity, she's older in "Silkwood" but she looks like a 28-year old woman with that mixture of tenderness and carelessness, and so deeply rooted altruism. I didn't know Meryl Streep could look so adorable, so childish, being sometimes naughty, yet revealing a stronger side than anyone, something she didn't knew she had. That's the stuff heroes are made on and I was sad to see that Karen Silkwood was only listed as 47 on AFI's Top 50 Heroes, so far below Norma Rae (#17) and Erin Brokovich (#31), especially since the reason why I loved "Silkwood" is precisely why I didn't like "Erin Brokovich".

Steffi_P The 1960s and 70s were known as an era of political filmmaking, but movies about unionism and left-wing causes continued to be made even into the individualist 80s. However these movies increasingly became small-scale personal dramas, emphasising the human stories within the struggle. And this did not have to be at the expense of their message. In the 1983 picture Silkwood, scripted by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen, we have a story of very real and intimate figures, fighting for issues at the most basic and human level.At this time, casting Meryl Streep for this kind of role was almost a given. Frankly she's never impressed me much – I often find her performances too calculated, too deliberate in her mannerisms and projection. There are still touches of that here, especially in the scene where here house is stripped, but for the most part Silkwood finds her at her most relaxed and natural. Co-star Kurt Russell on the other hand spent most of the 80s as big dumb action star, but here he is surprisingly believable and even sensitive. Cher, a long-established personality but still a relative newcomer to acting, has the most effortless performance, full of easygoing personality, eventually revealing an emotional fragility. Her scene on the swing bench with Streep shows an incredibly moving rapport between the two women.This was something of a comeback picture for director Mike Nichols, who after massive acclaim in the 60s had since suffered a string of flops. He still has the lateral thinker's approach that won him awards in his youth, but now it is more refined, less obtrusive. In Silkwood long takes are the norm, the camera either completely still or panning to follow an actor around the set. And, at a time when close-ups were becoming increasingly common, Silkwood is almost entirely in long- or mid-shot, sometimes with a barrier between us and the action, such as the scenes at the plant from within the equipment. It is almost as if we are looking in on the events, people-watching in effect. It gives the movie a strange sense of realism, and an impression that we are powerless to help as things unfold before our eyes. When we do finally get a close-up, as in Streep's goodbye to Russell, it is all the more effective for its rarity.In reality, there is no conclusive evidence to say whether or not Karen Silkwood's death was murder. And this telling of her life makes no definitive statement either. But what it does is show us Karen Silkwood as a real woman who lived, loved and struggled, and who should be remembered for who she was and what she did.

pinkst01 This is a very detailed story of how Karen Silkwood, worked for a Oklahoma nuclear plant named, Kerr-Mcghee. Karen was polluted by the plutonium intentionally, to keep her quite, as she exposed the many faulty activities being performed at this plant.Karen lived with her boyfriend Drew and friend Dolly, who all worked at the same nuclear plant. Dolly is a lesbian, and decides to move her girlfriend in with Dolly, Karen and Drew. Drew decided to quit because of the dangers of the plant and the issues his girlfriend Karen was bringing to the surface about the plant. Dolly continued to work at the plant along with Karen. Drew later leaves Karen also, because she will not stop with her accusations about the plant. Dolly's girlfriend moves out not long after Drew. If the employees were contaminated the process was miserable. Once it has been detected that you are contaminated a loud siren goes off as the red light flashes around the room you are in. Instantly you are escorted to the contamination room, where you are stripped and hosed down with what looked to be hard water. Your skin is then brutally scrubbed with a bristled brush as another person is hosing you down with water. The viewer can tell the antagonizing pain the person is in by the tone of their skin turning fiery red. All the employees hoped to not face this horrible situation. When Thelma was contaminated, Karen took it personally, constantly asked her if the nuclear plant was taken the appropriate steps necessary after the contamination. Karen started producing a bad name, being involved in Thelma's business. Karen made accusations that there were a lot of liars in management at the plant and one of the managers, Hurley over heard her. The first time Karen was contaminated with plutonium, she was transferred to the Metalography department. Karen would be brand new to this department and she was upset that she would not be able to acquire the over-time that she could in the department she came from. While working for this department she noticed that Winston, who is head of Metalography, was tracing the white spots in the negatives of the film, which could be defects in the weld. This seemed like a true cover up to Karen and she wanted to look into it further. The company was not totally clear to its employees of the possible effects to the quality of life one may have after being contaminated. Karen took it upon herself to do the research and later discovered that if she had more children they may have genetic defects and there was a possibility of being infected with Cancer, if you have been exposed to plutonium as Karen had been. This disturbed Karen, so she became more involved with Kerr-Mcghee's union. Karen was eager to exploit the mischief of this plant by any means necessary, one may still be eager to know if she lost her life trying to obtain this major goal she set out for herself.