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_ Silkwood: ‘honest portrayal’

Barbara Sands, Toronto, writes: I finally got
to see Silkwood and I have re-read Dan
Keeton’s review. (“Silkwood: bright but out
of focus,” Tribune , Jan. 1 1.) Asa subscriber
to the Tribune I would like to share some of
my thoughts about the film and about the
review.

Although Keeton’s overall review is a
postivie one I think he has missed some very
important aspects. Firstly, he says that the

chief Problem is that a script overtly intent
on showing the humanity of its protagonist
and her friends too often gets in the way of
the chief subject. Lengthy and often embar-
Tassingly mundane scenes devoted to emo-
tional break-ups or reconciliations would
have been far better left on the cutting
floor...” | disagree and think these scenes
are essential for the film’s political success.

Silkwood is a view of the nuclear industry
from the workers’ point of view. It is, very
important for both working people them-
selves and their progressive middle class

allies to see images of workers as strong,

fully-rounded characters to strengthen the
relationship between the anti-nuclear and
labor movements.

There has been a tremendous effort by
the powers-that-be to keep these two
movements as far away from each other as
possible. Workers are portrayed by the
press as rednecks, concerned only with their
hefty paycheques. Anti-nuclear activists are
depicted as dippie-hippies with no under-
standing of economic realities.

The ten-year court battle against Kerr-
McGee, filed by Silkwood’s family and
supported by the Oil, Chemical and Atomic
Workers union, as well as anti-nuclear and
women’s groups, has been the primary
means by which working and middle class
forces have come together over this issue.
Both now see their common enemy — the
big power monopolies that have no concern
either for workers’ safety or the environment.

(That suit triumphed a few weeks after
the film’s release when the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that a state has the right to

Sat., May 12, 1984
pe. P.M.
Band: Communique

BUDGET UNIVERSITY’S
GRADUATION DANCE

) Ukrainian Hall
- 805 E. Pender St.
$5/$3 unemployed

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enforce safety regulations of the nuclear
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able only to federal government's industry-
controlled Nuclear Regulatory Agency. The
ruling has opened the door to the possibility
of more local control of the nuclear
industry.)

One of the ways this film succeeds at
showing the workers’ point of view is
through its examination of the private lives
of ordinary working people in relation to
their struggles on the job. It does so in an
honest. and unsentimental way but with
respect and admiration. Screenwriters Nora
Ephron and Alice Arlen bring to life the
attitudes and contradictions of the white
working people of Oklahoma without
idealization.

Probably the most significant aspect of
the film and in my opinion one which has
been overlooked completely by Keeton, is
the way it portray’s Silkwood’s evolution
into political activism — the “transition”
which is all too often played down by the
left press.

Karen Silkwood’s character is not moti-
vated by political or moral abstractions; she
doesn’t “convert” after hearing a lecture on
the dangers of nuclear power. Her activities
develop as a response to the sensuous, basic,
everyday experiences of working in a pluto-
nium processing plant: the brutal scrub
downs after contamination that leave her
with almost no skin left; the arrogance and
sexual harassment of the supervisor who
spends his days air brushing the photos of
flawed plutonium rods. Then there is the
repressed anger of her co-workers who
know something is wrong but are scared to
move on it.

Every action she takes to change things

(attending a local union meeting, campaign-
ing in a union decertification election, talk-
ing to her co-workers and friends) teaches
her more about the reality she is trying to
change. It is the activity of fighting that
organizes her.
- And her commitment to struggle is never
portrayed as easy or unconflicted. This too,
is very real. Much of the film’s drama, in
fact, focuses on Silkwood’s internal battle
about the social struggle she increasingly
commits herself to.

Friends have complained that Silkwood
is not portrayed “positively” enough —
taking pills, feeling depressed, scared or
panicked. That, in fact, makes the film all
the more powerful. It shows that it is not
plaster saints who make progressive social
change but real, sometimes profoundly con-
flicted (personally as well as politically)
human beings, not unlike those in the
audience. :

I agree with Keeton, the film’s ending is
weak. While most of Silkwood clearly takes
the workers’ side, the ending is a mess of
obvious obscurity. Most critics in the bour-
geois press have understood the ending as

‘an aesthetic flaw rather than a political

decision.

ABC Motion Pictures, which produced
Silkwood, was informed by Kerr-McGee
that if the ending clearly implicated the
company in Silkwood’s murder, Kerr-
McGee would have sued for astronomical
sums. In fact, Kerr-McGee’s lawyers edited
the end of the film.

ly

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P

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_ PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 2, 1984.« 23