Silkwood

On November 13, 1974, the body of chemical technician and labor union activist Karen Silkwood was found dead in her car on the side of the road. The police ruled it an accident but some journalists believed otherwise. That night, she was on her way to meet a New York Times reporter with documentation that would prove her claims that the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site Plant, where she worked, had serious health and safety issues that resulted in her being contaminated with plutonium.

In 1983, her brief life was given biopic treatment with Mike Nichols directing a Nora Ephron screenplay and starred Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher. Silkwood was a critical and commercial success, receiving five Academy Award nominations. All three leads disappeared into their roles, bringing them vividly to life while giving the reasons for Karen’s fate enough ambiguity to leave it up to the viewer to decide.

We meet Karen (Streep), her boyfriend Drew Stephens (Russell) and their friend Dolly Pelliker (Cher) as they drive into work at the plant. Nichols proceeds to give us an abbreviated tour as we see an average day of work. A group of trainees are brought in, which is an excellent way of explaining what she and her co-workers do at the plant. It also shows the comradery among them (including notable character actors Fred Ward and Craig T. Nelson among others). Nichols creates a naturalistic vibe as we observe these blue collar workers bantering back and forth while they work. Like many, they work long hours for lousy wages and it makes them immediately relatable.

Drew, Karen and Dolly live in the same house together and hangout when they’re not at work. There is a believable familiarity between them that is apparent in the shorthand that they have with each other and is well-acted by Russell, Streep and Cher. They are people that eat at fast food restaurants, drive crappy little cars and live in run-down homes. They are the people that populate Bruce Springsteen songs – America’s heartland. It is crucial that we spend these quiet moments with them as we get to know and care about these people so that when things go south later on we’re invested in what happens to them.

Karen locks horns with the management at the plant when she is blamed for contaminating her section and then openly criticizes how a co-worker is treated when she is contaminated. Soon afterwards, Karen finds herself in a contaminated section and is subjected to the painful decontamination cleaning process. It seems suspiciously coincidental and so she decides to become active in the local union, which is in danger of being dissolved. She believes that the company is putting the employees at risk by cutting corners when it comes to safety reports. Union representatives in Washington, D.C. encourage her to get documentation and this complicates her personal and professional lives.

Meryl Streep turns in another solid performance as a smart person driven to do the right thing when she discovers that the powers that be at her job are putting her co-workers at risk and they don’t even know it. She’s not afraid to play Karen as a flawed person who stands up for what she believes in even though she makes mistakes in her personal life. The actress does an excellent job showing how this affects her job and vice versa. Streep isn’t afraid to show how scared Karen becomes when the company exerts pressure on her in all kinds of ways in the hopes of wearing her down. Despite this she soldiers on because she’s driven and believes what she’s doing is right.

Kurt Russell had a fascinating run of films in the 1980s, bouncing back and forth between genre films like Escape from New York (1981), comedies like Used Cars (1980), thrillers like The Mean Season (1985), and dramatic roles like the one in Silkwood. It’s wonderful to see him playing an everyman role like Drew, a stand-up guy that becomes increasingly frustrated with Karen spending more and more time involved with the union and less with him.

Cher delivers a wonderfully understated performance as Karen’s best friend. She dresses down and dials back her affectations in a way that she’s rarely done since. Even the reveal that Dolly is a lesbian is done matter-of-factly by Nichols. It’s performances in this, Mask (1985) and Moonstruck (1987) that demonstrated her natural acting talent and makes one wish that she did more film work.

Two grad students from the University of California Film School – Buzz Hirsch and Larry Cano – spent seven years assembling news reports, hearings transcripts and taped interviews with Karen’s friends, relatives and colleagues. Jane Fonda bought the rights to their work and fancied playing her with Lily Tomlin auditioning to play Dolly, but released the rights after making The China Syndrome (1979). Meryl Streep’s agent Sam Cohn moved in and bought the rights.

Cohn was responsible for bringing Mike Nichols on board as director. Screenwriters Alice Arlen and Nora Ephron were hired to write the screenplay with the former going to Los Alamos, New Mexico to do research on nuclear energy. The two women wrote a first draft and ended up spending a year working on subsequent drafts and revisions.

For the role of Dolly, Nichols offered the part to Cher while she was doing a play but she had to decide on the spot without reading the script. Needless to say, she agreed to do it. Streep had finished making Sophie’s Choice (1982) and two-and-a-half weeks later was filming Silkwood. Principal photography took place between September and November 1982.

To prepare for the role, Streep met with Drew Stephens, Karen’s boyfriend, and from him learned about her mannerisms and talked about her for two days. The actress was clearly on the same page as her director as she said in an interview, “Mike spoke of the film as being about people being asleep in their lives and waking up: ‘How did I get here?’ And that’s exactly how I felt.”

Cher’s approach to Dolly was that the she didn’t want to play her “stomping around with a pack of Marlboros rolled up in my T-shirt sleeve” and was set to cut her hair short but Nichols told her not to: “Let’s not make a statement about Dolly with a butch cut.” During filming, the director demanded she wear no make-up, which she had difficulty with: “There was nothing to hid behind in Dolly. There’s no flash. That’s exactly what was needed, so the public would see past ‘Cher’ and accept me as an actress.”

Silkwood grossed $35 million at the box office off a budget of $10 million. It also received strong critical notices, chief among them Roger Ebert who gave it a four-star review: “It’s a little amazing that established movie stars like Streep, Russell and Cher could disappear so completely into the everyday lives of these characters.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised Streep’s performance: “Her portrait of the initially self-assured and free-living, then radicalized and, finally, terrified Karen Silkwood is unlike anything she’s done to date, except in its intelligence. It’s a brassy, profane, gum-chewing tour de force, as funny as it is moving.”

Nichols deftly avoids the more obvious conventions of the biopic. He doesn’t put Karen on a pedestal and instead presents her as a real person doing the best she can under increasingly stressful conditions. This goes for all the characters. None of them are perfect and this is what humanizes them. He also avoids telegraphing “important” moments in the film with overtly dramatic music to manipulate our emotions. There is very little score and what is used is done sparingly. There are no epic showdowns with a swelling score – just quietly intense moments presented with no frills direction.

Silkwood is a quietly powerful drama about a woman not afraid to go against a company that was hurting people at the cost of her alienating co-workers and friends. She ended up paying the ultimate price and this film is a fitting tribute to her life.

SOURCES

Bego, Mark. Cher: If You Believe. Cooper Square Press. 2001.

Cohen, Richard. She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron. Simon and Schuster. 2016.

Egginton, Joyce. “The Karen Silkwood File.” The Observer. April 6, 1984.

“Meryl Streep.” American Film. December 1983.

Moonstruck

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on the Wonders in the Dark blog as part of their Great Romantic Movies countdown.

It took a Canadian filmmaker to make Moonstruck (1987), the quintessential Italian-American romantic comedy from a screenplay written by an Irish-American playwright, but then isn’t that what the American experience is all about? For what is the United States, but the great melting pot? Norman Jewison’s film is a celebration of love, life and food. John Patrick Shanley’s script is full of romantic yearnings for, among many things, the opera and, of course, the moon. Above all else, the film places an emphasis on the importance of family. Moonstruck was the My Big Fat Geek Wedding (2002) of its day only infinitely better and about an Italian family as opposed to a Greek one. Watching Jewison’s film again, you realize just how much Nia Vardalos’ romantic comedy is heavily indebted to it. If Moonstruck is La Boheme than Greek Wedding is Tony and Tina’s Wedding.

Loretta Castorini (Cher) is engaged to Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello). They act like an old married couple and they haven’t even tied the knot yet! And therein lies the problem – their relationship lacks passion. He is called away suddenly to Italy to see his mother on her deathbed and asks Loretta to invite his estranged brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage) to their wedding. Ronny works in a bakery and is bitter over having lost his hand in a freak accident, blaming Johnny for what happened. In a classic case of opposites attracting, Loretta and Ronny find themselves irresistibly drawn to each other.

At the time, Nicolas Cage was considered an odd casting choice because of his reputation as an eccentric character actor. The way he gestures and enunciates certain words is off-kilter in such a way that it gives his scenes a wonderfully unpredictable vibe. He makes unusual choices and surprisingly they all work. Cage delivers a very physical, Brando-esque performance only filtered through his very distinctive style of acting as evident in the scene where Ronny and Loretta meet for the first time. Cage is fascinating to watch for the unusual choices he makes. Ronny paces around the room, starting his rant quietly before gradually building in intensity, punctuating his impassioned speech with words like, “huh” and “sweetie.” Jewison orchestrates the actor beautifully through editing so that the scene has an absolutely captivating rhythm as we gain insight into Ronny’s character. Cage conveys an impressive range of emotions as Ronny goes from pride to rage to sadness.

He plays well off of Cher and they have the kind of chemistry that is so important for this kind of film. His fiery, Method approach works well in contrast to Cher’s more controlled style and their scenes together crackle with the intensity of two actors with very different approaches bouncing off each other. Ronny is a wounded animal, “a wolf without a foot,” as Loretta puts it, and she is “a bride without a head,” as he tells her, but over the course of the film she transforms him into a civilized human being. She brings out the romantic who likes to dress up and go to the opera. Cher does a wonderful job of immersing herself in the character of Loretta, a strong-willed, smart woman who thinks she has it all figured out until she meets Ronny. On the surface, Loretta may seem like a cynic, but she has taken what she feels is a more realistic approach towards love because of the death of her previous husband. She has chosen to marry Johnny not because she loves him, but because he’s a safe bet. Her heart has fallen asleep only to be awakened by Ronny. Cher won a well-deserved Academy Award for her performance as a widow who, against her better judgement, falls in love again. Watching her in this film reminds one how natural an actress she is and what a crime it is that she doesn’t act more often.

Cage and Cher are well supported by a fantastic cast of colorful character actors. Vincent Gardenia plays Loretta’s cheap father Cosmo who has a lover on the side and Olympia Dukakis is Rose, her wise mother full of world-weary pearls of wisdom, like when she tells her daughter about men: “When you love them they drive you crazy because they know they can.” There’s an air of sadness to her character as Rose seems to have resigned herself to a life where every day is the same. Then there’s Feodor Chaliapin, Jr. as Loretta’s grandfather who can be seen in several scenes walking his small fleet of mangy dogs and seems to be used as merely window-dressing until Jewison gives him a pivotal moment towards the end of the film.

The film’s secret weapon is Danny Aiello as mama’s boy Johnny. From hysterical crying to the way he interacts with Cher’s Loretta, his portrayal of Johnny is a master class in comedic acting. Johnny thinks he knows something about men and women (“A man who can’t control his woman is funny.”), but is quickly put in his place by Loretta. Aiello does wonders with throwaway bits of dialogue like, “My scalp is not getting enough blood sometimes,” as Johnny tells Loretta over dinner while vigorously rubbing his hair. He doesn’t mug per se, but rather plays it straight in a way that makes his character look ridiculous via tiny gestures or through a specific facial expression. Compared to someone like Cage, you know Aiello has no chance with Cher, but the actor plays it like Johnny believes they are going to get married all the way through the film.

There are superb recurring gags, like John Mahoney’s sad university professor who keeps striking out with younger women that throw wine in his face midway through dinner before storming out of the restaurant. While his character is a bit of a Lech, Mahoney’s expressive eyes convey a sadness that makes you feel somewhat sympathetic for him. There’s a nice scene between his character and Rose where they end up having dinner together at the restaurant after he’s publicly embarrassed yet again by his latest young lady friend (Canadian actress Cynthia Dale in a small role). It’s a lovely scene between two lonely people as they talk honestly about their lives and she asks him, “Why do men chase women?” He has no good answer and she tells him, “I think it’s because they fear death.” It kickstarts a fascinating conversation that allows us to understand these two people. Every time I watch Moonstruck I imagine an offshoot film that follows Rose and the professor as they run off together or perhaps have a brief affair.

The use of location is excellent. For example, the opening shot is of Lincoln Center (which features prominently later on) in New York City so we know exactly where we are. Most of the film is set in Brooklyn and Jewison conveys an almost tactile feel for the borough. You want to be there and know these people. You also get a real sense of community. The warm, inviting lighting of the Italian restaurant where Johnny proposes to Loretta and where her mother has dinner with Mahoney’s professor has a wonderful, intimate atmosphere made up of warm reds and contrasting greens that puts you right there. There is another scene where Loretta looks out the window at the full moon in the night sky and the lighting is perfect with just the right music that results in such a touching, poignant moment. No words are spoken because none are needed with such visuals.

Moonstruck received mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “I was struck by how subtle and gentle it is, despite all the noise and emotion. How it loves its characters, and refuses to limit their personalities to a few comic traits.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley wrote, “They’re an irresistibly offbeat couple – Cage playing on the edge, where he likes it; Cher creating a fairy tale realist, captivating yet cautious. He looks like the bastard son of Mama Celeste and Wile E. Coyote, and she, as the camera romances her Mediterranean features, is Mona Lisa in heavy mascara.” In her review for the Los Angeles Times, Sheila Benson wrote, “They come from Shanley’s gorgeous dialogue: the tart, real talk of people who’ve lived together their lives long, filtered through a poet’s sensibility.” The Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel wrote, “Cher is the nominal star of what turns out to be a terrific ensemble piece about a bunch of tough-as-nails Italian characters living in New York.” However, in her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Moonstruck clearly means to celebrate all things Italian. However, it creates the false but persistent impression that most of the people who made it have never been closer to Italy than, perhaps, Iowa.”

As much as the 1980s was typified by Wall Street’s (1987) Gordon Gekko and his “Greed is good” mantra, Moonstruck is about blue-collar people. It pays tribute to folks that represent the glue of society, showing us bookkeepers, bread makers, liquor store owners, plumbers and so on plying their trade. The characters in this film may lead workaday jobs, but their personal lives are anything but average. Like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Moonstruck does heighten ethnic stereotypes for comedic effect, but the latter film does so sincerely and with class. Moonstruck perpetuates a lot of Italian stereotypes, but not in a grating way, playfully making fun of some of them while celebrating others with affection. Far from being a bundle of ethnic clichés, it is a celebration of the Italian-American experience. The crucial difference between the two films is tone. Where Greek Wedding is all cuddly, feel good sitcom, Moonstruck has some bite to it, an edge as represented by Cage’s passionate performance. This film is full of fantastic acting and much pleasure comes from watching a very talented cast speak brilliantly written dialogue. Best of all it has a wonderful sense of romantic naivete, a cinematic love letter to New York City.