Silkwood’s Chemistry-Filled, A-List Conspiracy Gave Mike Nichols a Win 40 Years Ago

Four years after Sally Field unionized her cotton mill in Norma Rae, and Jane Fonda uncovered terrifying wrong-doing at her local nuclear power plant in The China Syndrome, another legendary Hollywood actress did her very best to expose some deadly corporate malfeasance: Meryl Streep in Silkwood.

Streep plays Karen Silkwood, who lives with her boyfriend Drew (Kurt Russell) and their best friend Dolly (Cher). They are all workers at an Oklahoman plutonium plant, where they spend their days handling radioactive material without giving it much thought. After an increasing number of frightening incidents, however, Karen starts investigating the plant’s working conditions, and is horrified at what she finds. Her digging gets the attention of the higher-ups, and soon she’s facing even more immediate dangers than the specter of radiation poisoning. 

You perhaps wouldn’t think that a Streep right at the start of her historic run of Oscar nominations, a Russell in the middle of his reign as ‘80s action hero par excellence, and a Cher transitioning from music to movie stardom, would all necessarily even belong in the same film. Yet so much of Silkwood relies on the pleasure they take in each other’s company, and we in theirs. It’s not hard to imagine the trio’s dynamic spilling out into a sort of southern, proto-Friends sitcom, with arguments about food, road trips to visit Karen’s estranged kids, and Dolly’s girlfriends becoming continuing plotlines.

That camaraderie extends beyond the central threesome too, with co-workers at the factory like David Strathairn (a lovely little moment where he helps Streep get gum off her face is an endearing precursor to their collaboration in The River Wild) and Fred Ward forming their own kind of unconventional family. For a good portion of Silkwood, corporate conspiracy takes a backseat to slice-of-life character study, the incipient flames of brewing disaster viewable just as a wispy plume of smoke, far in the distance. 

That’s the genius of Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen’s screenplay: The texture of Karen’s day-to-day life is so vividly, lovingly, normally drawn, it makes the plunge into disaster hit all the harder. Silkwood was Ephron’s first produced screenplay, and notably different from the fluffier films she’d become famous for. But you can feel her there in the easy, funny exchanges between our trio, and Dolly’s sincere and gently rebuffed confession of love to Karen. There’s a buoyant, steely fragility to both Karen and Dolly that marks them out as the first Ephron heroines. 

Of course, you expect top quality work from Streep, and in Silkwood, she certainly delivers. It’s her co-star here who’s the real revelation. Though Cher had been well-received in Robert Altman’s Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, she was very much the new girl on set compared to Streep (who’d already starred in Kramer vs. Kramer, The Deer Hunter, The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Sophie’s Choice) and Russell, who’d been a movie star since he was 12 years old. 

But you’d never guess it from Cher’s performance. Cher disappears into the lesbian Oklahoman plutonium plant worker to a frankly miraculous extent; if this film was your introduction to her, it’d be hard to believe she’d spent much of the previous two decades as the uber-glamorous Goddess of Pop. Her turn never calls attention to itself, never strikes as anything less than completely organic. She’s every inch the peer of her far more seasoned colleagues, and it’s wonderful to watch her work alongside them so equitably. 

Even as the action starts moving into more conventional conspiracy thriller territory, the relationship between the central trio remains the locus of everything; with the real villains of the film being somewhat intangible (although Craig T. Nelson makes your skin crawl as their creepy, corporate ass-kissing colleague), the loss of Drew or Dolly presents a greater emotional threat than any singular, shadowy figure. And even as things become really bad for Karen—her two decontamination scenes are so visceral that you can feel the knife scrape of that steel brush on your own skin—the happiness the three friends find in each other is a balm. In a movie surprisingly full of charming moments, the scene where, upon Drew’s return after a fight with Karen, Dolly leaps with puppyish delight on top of him as he lies in bed and exclaims, “Look at your little face! Look at your little body!” is perhaps the cream of the crop. Sure, it may be a lot more focused on the perils of radiation, but in its own way, Silkwood is just as much an iconic ‘80s hangout film as The Big Chill.

And of course, I’d be remiss not to mention the man that helmed the movie. Mike Nichols had been a director adrift for a long time. After the wondrous back-to-back debut duo of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate, his follow-ups had been decidedly less impressive—the nadir being 1973’s execrable The Day of the Dolphin (Its immortal tagline: “Unwittingly, He Trained A Dolphin to Kill The President of the United States”). In the decade between that and Silkwood, Nichols’ only filmed projects had been a flaccid knockoff of The Sting, The Fortune, and a Gilda Radner comedy special. He desperately needed a successful movie, and it came along right in the nick of time.

In Mark Harris’ resplendent biography of Nichols, Mike Nichols: A Life, the chapter on Silkwood is one overflowing with joy: That of a director rediscovering his love of his craft, of talented people at different stages of their careers collaborating with one another harmoniously, of making something to be proud of. And indeed Silkwood proved tremendously successful for all involved, winning big box office returns and largely laudatory reviews, and scoring a phalanx of Oscar nominations for its topline cast and crew. 

But the most surprising thing about Silkwood is just how much that joy enriches this movie with such unjoyful subject matter at its center. It’s the film’s whole-hearted commitment to portraying the precious fullness of a complicated life, its pleasures as well as its sorrows, that still makes it a profoundly rich, poignant viewing experience, 40 years after its original release. 

Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can read her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Podcast Review, and Paste.