I was very young in the 80's and there was no chance I would have been interested in this movie even if I had known about it, which I didn't. It cost $10 million to make and made triple that at the box office. When you watch it today you might be surprised at how many faces you recognize in it but for the most part this movie that is based on real events kind of went by unnoticed despite having great acting, music, and an important story based in truth.
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Let's not forget that Cher was once an accomplished actor as well before she did so much plastic surgery that she now stays out of the public eye since she appears to be a lizard. She did very well in this film and was the only person in it to win a major award in a Golden Globe for best supporting actress. Her role was a pretty taboo subject matter at the time because Cher's character of "Dolly" reveals that she is a lesbian about halfway through the movie. This was no the sort of thing that we see forced into every Netflix thing that comes out these days, in 1983 you could be in a lot of trouble if you did this sort of thing in a movie.
The movie is about a group of people that work in a plutonium refinery plant and how they are being exposed to radiation on a regular basis and the employers do very little to protect the workers. As the film goes on more and more shady things start happening in and around the plant. Meryl Streep's character of Karen Silkwood is an unlikely person to end up being a spokesperson for the people but that is precisely what she ends up doing. Initially she doesn't really care but one day she is wrongfully accused of sabotaging the production line that she works on so that she could get a few days off. Then she has a bit of a sense of revenge on her mind because she was wrongfully accused.
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I wouldn't say that this film is massively entertaining today but at the time, when the Cold War was still going on and radioactive products like plutonium were things that everyone was afraid of, this was probably a very big story that made a lot of people afraid. This is a minor spoiler (sorry) but Karen discovers that not only is the company kind of abusing their employees but they are actually cutting corners and altering the xrays of the finished product in order to pass it off as complete when in fact it is dangerously incomplete. Somebody else's problem right? Well in this instance this fudging of the records could have resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
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This is a dramatic biopic so don't expect much actual action. What you do end up with is a tale of people just trying to get by in life and for me anyway it was kind of surprising that people who handle radioactive and explosive materials would be paid so little and have so little actual training that they struggled to make ends meet. 3 of the characters in the film - Kurt Russel, Streep, and Cher, all live in the same run down house despite all of them working full time.
So when people today talk about the low pay in the workforce they might have a point, but at least you don't have to work with something that if handled incorrectly, is almost certainly going to give you cancer at the minimum.
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Another thing that happens that isn't essential to the story at all was kind of a time-travel experience for me and for those of you that weren't alive in the early 80's it may surprise you. Basically everyone in the movie smokes all the time. It doesn't matter if they are on airplanes, in the breakroom, at a diner, or handing their children on their laps, they have a cigarette burning at all times. Even though I was very young I do actually remember this being the case everywhere that you went. Pretty much the only place that people didn't smoke was in church or in your own house if your family didn't smoke. It was quite common back then for friends of my family to visit and without even asking, they would light up inside your house - right next to babies and stuff like that. My family had no smokers in it but we kept ashtrays around for this exact situation. It's unreal to think that this is just how life was back then.
Streep doesn't actually smoke so this must have been a bit annoying to her. If you ever have smoked you can tell that she isn't inhaling but for 80% of the movie she has a ciggy in her hands.
Should I watch it?
That trailer is pretty funny and reminiscent of all movie trailers in the 80's and half of the 90's. Almost all films had a narrator tell you what the movie was about and it sounded like it was the same person every time.
I think the answer to whether or not you should watch this movie is "it depends." The subject matter isn't really all that big of a deal and nothing major really came out of this story. It also isn't an "edge of your seat" thriller. By many people's standard this movie probably moves too slow to keep them interested and I think they probably really struggled to make it 90 minutes long. However, Meryl Streep is regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation and if you would like to see why that is, then you should probably see this. I'm not suggesting this is her finest work or anything but she does a good job in it. The film is also a lot of fun because it seems like every time they switch to a new scene there is someone in the background or in a minor role that went on to later star in many many things. It is also interesting to me to see Kurt Russel and Meryl Streep play as boyfriend and girlfriend since their careers went in wildly different directions in the years that followed the release of this film.
I enjoyed it, but the attention span of many people of today might not be strong enough to get you all the way through this.
Silkwood is not on any streaming platform. You'll have to go sailing if you want to check it out