I thought this was an interesting movie.
Meryl Streep stars as Karen Silkwood, a worker at the Kerr-McGee plant in Oklahoma. Divorced with limited access to seeing her kids, Karen lives with her co-workers Drew, who she is dating, (played by Kurt Russell) and Dolly (played by Cher).
The film tracks negligence within the Kerr-McGee plant, which works heavily with radiation, specifically plutonium. One night, leaving work, Karen sees the company breaking apart and destroying an entire truck, and is shunned away when she questions why they are doing this. Later she finds out that the truck was fully contaminated with radiation. Then, her coworker Thelma is found to be contaminated (as all workers have to scan their arms across a detector near the exit door before they leave), brutally washed down and left distressed. Karen, who had (jokingly) stated she wished to have the weekend off to see her kids, is held responsible for the contamination, rather than the company taking any action, leading to tension with her co-workers.
This leads to Karen herself being flagged for radiation, where she is once again held responsible after being brutally washed down in what feels like a torture procedure. And Kerr-McGee takes no responsibility. With this context in mind, she asks to join the union committee in Washington, DC to ensure that the union still has a presence at the company, and, after speaking with others, finds out that Kerr-McGee's actions do add up to negligence and just suspicious ways of cutting corners at the expense of the workers. She agrees to collect evidence on Kerr-McGee over time, but this becomes pretty much publicly known, leading to more tension with her co-workers who largely believe the company is innocent. This also puts strain on her relationship with Drew and Dolly, leading to Drew eventually moving away.
As Kerr-McGee becomes more and more aware of Karen's position now, suspicious things begin popping up. Karen is frequently flagged for radiation at work and is washed down. Her home is tested and found to be contaminated with radiation, to which the only way that would seem plausible is if someone contaminated her urine sample with the plutonium, although Dolly is found to not have significant levels in her system. Eventually, through the distress of it all, Karen is able to improve her relationships with Drew and Dolly and plans to meet with a NY Times journalist with what she know believes is sufficient documentation against Kerr-McGee. On the drive to meeting, she is suspiciously involved in a car accident, later found to be driven off the road, that results in her untimely death, especially since even with all her exposure to radiation, she wasn't in immediate danger (rather her chances of developing cancer later in life was greater).
The film really works to show us Karen outside the work environment, that she is a mother, someone who is really trying to get her life back on track and was just wronged by corporate greed. Meryl Streep and Cher give great performances and the movie was an interesting watch.
I thought this was an interesting movie.
Meryl Streep stars as Karen Silkwood, a worker at the Kerr-McGee plant in Oklahoma. Divorced with limited access to seeing her kids, Karen lives with her co-workers Drew, who she is dating, (played by Kurt Russell) and Dolly (played by Cher).
The film tracks negligence within the Kerr-McGee plant, which works heavily with radiation, specifically plutonium. One night, leaving work, Karen sees the company breaking apart and destroying an entire truck, and is shunned away when she questions why they are doing this. Later she finds out that the truck was fully contaminated with radiation. Then, her coworker Thelma is found to be contaminated (as all workers have to scan their arms across a detector near the exit door before they leave), brutally washed down and left distressed. Karen, who had (jokingly) stated she wished to have the weekend off to see her kids, is held responsible for the contamination, rather than the company taking any action, leading to tension with her co-workers.
This leads to Karen herself being flagged for radiation, where she is once again held responsible after being brutally washed down in what feels like a torture procedure. And Kerr-McGee takes no responsibility. With this context in mind, she asks to join the union committee in Washington, DC to ensure that the union still has a presence at the company, and, after speaking with others, finds out that Kerr-McGee's actions do add up to negligence and just suspicious ways of cutting corners at the expense of the workers. She agrees to collect evidence on Kerr-McGee over time, but this becomes pretty much publicly known, leading to more tension with her co-workers who largely believe the company is innocent. This also puts strain on her relationship with Drew and Dolly, leading to Drew eventually moving away.
As Kerr-McGee becomes more and more aware of Karen's position now, suspicious things begin popping up. Karen is frequently flagged for radiation at work and is washed down. Her home is tested and found to be contaminated with radiation, to which the only way that would seem plausible is if someone contaminated her urine sample with the plutonium, although Dolly is found to not have significant levels in her system. Eventually, through the distress of it all, Karen is able to improve her relationships with Drew and Dolly and plans to meet with a NY Times journalist with what she know believes is sufficient documentation against Kerr-McGee. On the drive to meeting, she is suspiciously involved in a car accident, later found to be driven off the road, that results in her untimely death, especially since even with all her exposure to radiation, she wasn't in immediate danger (rather her chances of developing cancer later in life was greater).
The film really works to show us Karen outside the work environment, that she is a mother, someone who is really trying to get her life back on track and was just wronged by corporate greed. Meryl Streep and Cher give great performances and the movie was an interesting watch.
