Category: Nora Ephron

SILKWOOD

By Marc S. Sanders

As the 1980s were setting its stride, Silkwood might have been one of the earliest in a line of films to focus on the union worker who fights back at the billion-dollar corporation.  Some might unfairly regard the movie as The China Syndrome, Part II. Other well-known pictures of this mold are even more familiar to me like Michael Mann’s The Insider.  However, director Mike Nichols, working with a first screenwriting effort from Nora Ephron who partnered with Alice Arlen, showcases the aggravation on not just Karen Silkwood, the real life potential whistleblower, but also her friends and co-workers in a one factory town just outside of Oklahoma City.

Karen (Meryl Streep) lives with her boyfriend Drew (Kurt Russell) and her best friend Dolly (Cher) in a run-down house in the middle of nowhere.  They ride to work together at the local plutonium manufacturing plant where they dress in scrubs and gloves. Punch in, punch out kind of days, and often they are expected to work double shifts and weekends.  Karen works an assembly line where she places her hands in rubber gloves and assembles dangerous combinations of chemicals in an enclosed box.  It’s also routine that before you leave your station you wave your hands over a sensor to ensure you have not been exposed to radiation.  There’s even sensors you walk through as you enter and leave the plant.  When those sensors go off, a calm kind of film seemingly turns into a horror movie.  The last thing anyone could ever want is to get “cooked.”

Karen does not live a perfect life.  Her three kids reside with their uncompromising father in Texas.  Money is not ideal.  Dolly is a slob and has also invited her girlfriend to live with them.  Karen can manage with all of this, but when she observes some unconventional activities around the factory she gets up the nerve to head the union for better protection and working conditions.  However, the further she goes looking at files and photos, jotting down notes of what people say and do, plus taking trips to Washington DC, and getting phone calls from attorneys at night, she becomes more and more isolated from Dolly and Drew, along with the rest of her close-knit workers.  Karen is not just risking her job, but everyone else’s jobs and worse her own life.

The attorneys lay it out to the townsfolk and the union of the horrifying statistics that go along with radiation exposure.  The tiniest fraction of a miniscule of exposure to the smallest crumb of chemicals could increase a human’s bearable limit towards radiation and cancer.  The sad irony is that the more that is learned, the more the people of this area smoke and smoke some more.  Granted, this story takes place in the early 1970s, though.    

The company is primarily represented by an intimidating Bruce McGill.  He’s great in everything he does and is worthy of an Oscar nomination somewhere.  M Emmet Walsh has no lines but his presence is enough to shake you; the slimy guy you easily recognize from every other movie you have seen.  While the company’s overbearing intrusion is shown plenty, the script for Silkwood focuses more on how these working people get by.  They are treated unfairly and in dangerous working conditions, but they also know this is the only place that offers steady income in the area.  Without this factory, the whole town would be left in dire straits.  Karen is repeatedly told or implied to leave well enough alone.

Meryl Streep notches another harrowing performance on her resume and bears such a departure from more sophisticated characters found in Sophie’s Choice and Kramer Vs Kramer.  Karen Silkwood is not educated and she bears an unmistakable white trash dialect but she’s also not stupid and the more progress she makes at exposing the plant’s shortcomings the more unfairly she is treated with department transfers and workplace shake ups that she is indirectly blamed for.  Potential threats on her life begin to build, but she only upholds a bravery.  You really observe the strength of Meryl Streep.  She’s at the top of an elite class of actresses at this time that also included Sally Field, Jessica Lange and Glenn Close.

Cher plays Dolly in her first on screen role.  The variety act performer probably subjected herself to a bigger departure than Streep.  She was not a professionally trained actress at the time.  Mike Nichols insisted on no makeup along with her hair unkept and flat, while dressed in green chino pants and baggy sweatshirts.  The new actress carries herself so well without the usual glitz that accompanies her.  Her scenes with Streep are workshops in acting technique. 

Kurt Russell delivers another understated performance.  One of the best actors out there who has never been enough of a critical darling.  Drew is likable and Kurt Russell plays him as a settled in match for Streep’s portrayal of Karen.  Watch how they tangle up in each other’s arms in bed or when he snaps at her as she carries on her crusade while he’d rather things be left alone.  His timing is perfect for the script.

Mike Nichols keeps his film calm, except when the go by the numbers narrative must be disturbed.  A radiation cleanse with high pressure hoses will make you wince.  The factory alarms will terrify you.  Meryl Streep accepts the physical taxations necessary for this setting.  Nichols gets in close with his camera to show how cleansers dressed in scrubs and masks rub Streep down until her skin is a burning red.  I distinctly remember how her right ear appears in this scene, getting flushed by something just short of a fire hose, and the aftermath of her sitting in a chair is so discomforting while a company doctor assures her that there’s not much to worry about as long she brings in her urine samples daily.  In fact, soon all of the employees are tasked with delivering their urine samples.  What kind of place is this?

While Silkwood is based on a true story with a burning question left behind, I do not want to reveal too much.  Many have seen Silkwood since it was released over forty years ago, but as the third act begins, the fallout only becomes more disturbing and Mike Nichols directs a horrifying sequence built primarily on the pealing of old wallpaper.  That’s all I want to suggest. 

Karen Silkwood was a very unlikely crusader.  She probably never envisioned what she would become and what she would fight for.  Yet, she uncovered horrible truths that should not have been occurring under the eye of billion-dollar corporate America.  After watching Silkwood, I can only imagine what else was there to turn over.

NOTE: Another good reason to watch Silkwood is to discover early performances from some amazing character actors who were either just starting their careers or continuing to hide in the crowd. 

Scavenger hunt for Anthony Heald, James Rebhorn, David Strathairn, Ron Silver, Fred Ward, Diana Scarwid, Bill Cobbs, M Emmet Walsh, Craig T Nelson, Tess Harper, Will Patton, Richard Hamilton and Josef Sommer.

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY…

By Marc S. Sanders

Two years after my family and I moved from New Jersey to Florida, I was age 16 and still felt lonely. Very lonely.  I was not prepared for the culture shock of leaving a primarily Jewish community and transitioning into a mixed bag of different cultures and mentalities.  I couldn’t adjust and the only people I could understand in 1989 were Batman, Indiana Jones and Harry & Sally.

The script written for When Harry Met Sally… focuses on the title characters adjusting to life in the decade following college graduation, where their paths cross periodically and they debate the aftermath of Casablanca, as well as what it means to sleep with someone or not.  More importantly, they are often returning their attention to whether a man and a woman can be friends without any temptation for love or intimacy, no matter how attractive they find each other to be.  Boy oh boy, that’s a loaded observation, isn’t it?  It is so consuming that as close as Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) become with one another as best friends, no matter how many people they date, they still couldn’t be any lonelier.  At the time, I could understand their dilemma.  I had a terrible crush on a girl at school. We were close friends who could laugh with each other.  Yet, I never took it to the next step.  I should have asked her to the homecoming dance in our sophomore year.  I really should have.  The risk, though, is the change in the comfortable dynamic we had.  I didn’t want to lose that.  Harry and Sally are attractive to one another.  Rob Reiner includes great close ups of the two actors looking at each other, wondering who is going to make the first move.  Will they bring this relationship to a new level?  It may never happen.  It didn’t for the girl I thought I could fall in love with.  At least Harry and Sally had each other’s shoulders to cry on. I adore this film, directed by Rob Reiner, because I yearned for what they had in friendship first, and as a relationship second.

Sally and Harry couldn’t be any different.  He is of the mindset that any woman he encounters is destined to be slept with, or more simply put, men and women could never be friends because at the bare minimum, men are thinking about sleeping with every woman they come across.  Sally can’t understand that, but when Harry shares his philosophy with her the first time they meet, while on an 18-hour drive from the University of Chicago to New York City, she can’t help but suspect that it just might be possible.

The two depart from one another to start their new lives in the big city, and come across each other five years after that on a flight they inadvertantly share, and then another five years later when they are given an opportunity to catch up on their relationship status.  In present day, 1988, Sally has just broken up with her longtime boyfriend.  Harry has gotten a divorce.  Ephron has written these characters to ultimately need one another.

When Harry Met Sally… is certainly a comedy, but more than likely it’s because Billy Crystal’s quick wit and delivery comes off familiar from his other career accomplishments.  Meg Ryan works beautifully as a scene partner that debates Harry’s cynical view of people with Sally’s natural positivity.  Their mentalities go in opposite directions, but the film continues to imply that these two couldn’t be more perfect for one another.  Chalk that up to Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal’s chemistry.  They are one of the all-time great on-screen couples.  These two actors are my friends.  I want it to work out for them.  When I saw the film three times in the theatres, I wanted to experience what they experienced.  Their story has bumps in the road.  They get mad and upset with each other.  They debate with one another, but they amuse one another too, and what a romantic adventure they share together.

A terrific novelty of Reiner’s film is when he cuts away to elderly couples with rich histories of how they met and stay together for decades after.  We weren’t there to see these wonderful people kindle their relationships, but we’ll see how Harry and Sally come together.  I remember long ago, that my father told me that when you get married, make sure you are marrying your best friend.  He said love is important, but you have to like each other first.  I did marry my best friend and I like her.  I love her too.  We drive each other crazy.  We have very different interests.  We even live in our home differently, that we share with our daughter and dog, but we want to be with each other and no one else.  No one else factors.  When you watch When Harry Met Sally… you see why two people continue to be with each other, first as friends, and maybe as lovers later.  When you have a best friend in your life there’s no one else you want to laugh with or cry with more often than that person.  There’s no other hand you want to hold.

A brilliant midway scene in the film occurs when Harry and Sally have the misguided idea of setting up their other best friends with each other.  Harry’s buddy Jess (Bruno Kirby) may be a good fit for Sally.  They are both writers, after all.  Sally’s girlfriend Marie (Carrie Fisher) has a keen interest in conquering married men, not far off from how Harry routinely proceeds with one relationship after another by sleeping with the women he dates.  He’s not in love with them, but of course he’ll sleep with them.  The irony comes when both Harry and Sally could never fathom that Jess and Marie find each other attractive, not the ones they were originally intended for.

There’s much heightened romanticism to When Harry Met Sally… I won’t claim it to be very realistic with how life works out for many of us.  Look at the famous deli scene where Meg Ryan demonstrates for Crystal’s character that a woman can convincingly fake an orgasm.  It’s a hilarious scene.  One for the ages.  However, a scene like that wouldn’t happen.  If a scene like that did occur in real life, the woman would be asked to leave the premises immediately.  It’s not the point though. 

Love and happiness should consist of elevating ourselves to a delightful fantasy of joy, affection and laughter.  Love should also guide us to carry our best friends through sadness and frustration.  We can’t survive this challenge, we call life, alone.  I realized that first hand when my innocent, naïve and unsure teenage self watched the movie for the first time all those years ago at the Mission Bell movie theatre in Tampa. 

People need someone to grow with.  We need someone to continue to teach us while we teach them in return.  Most importantly, as it becomes a running theme in When Harry Met Sally…, we need someone to kiss at midnight every New Year’s Eve.