Word: streep
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Your review of Silkwood [Dec. 19] is nasty and obtuse. Silkwood is a troubling film, and Meryl Streep is brilliant. The movie does not patronize working-class people, but shows the horrors of their subjection to nightmares like radioactive contamination...
...time and a fair number of laughs. Director Gerald Gutierrez has mined the big, handsome virtues in this deceptively modest play, putting a shine on everything from the show tunes and rock standards to the voices on Janie's telephone-answering machine (including the desperate plaints of Meryl Streep, in her best and most hilarious performance of the year), to the stagehands (who wear Acme Movers coveralls, then tuxedos, then jogging suits, as the scenic occasion demands). The cast is collectively splendid, with star-making performances by the two leads. Rose hits every mood, from rue to despair, with...
This is a criticism one extends to Meryl Streep in the title role. She is an actress of calculated effects, which work well when she is playing self-consciously intelligent women. But interpreting a character who abandoned three children, shares a house with a rather shiftless boyfriend and a lesbian (Kurt Russell and Cher, both of whom are easier and more naturalistic performers) and shows her contempt for Authority by flashing a bare breast at its representative, she seems at once forced and pulled back...
...furnished house. Her red hair, compulsive cigarette smoking and good-natured rambunctiousness are charming, and we gradually accept her character for what she is, not what she could be if she ignored the corruption and raised her three children from a common-law marriage who live with their father. Streep plays well off the other characters, featuring her rugged live-in boyfriend Drew (Kurt Russell) and her bizarre, sexually frustrated roommate Dolly (Cher). Both Russell and Cher turn in excellent performances, overcoming past stereotypes--Russell as the adventurous hero of Walt Disney stories, and Cher on the careening rock star...
...Streep's haunting singing of "Amazing Grace" at the end can captivate the viewer, as her clear and resounding voice reinforces her naive struggle against the establishment. Silkwood is not an enjoyable movie but is instead painful, especially during the scenes preceding Kevin's death. But on the other hand it plunges into the lives of Karen Silkwood and her friends without sensationalizing the struggle against bigger and more powerful foes. The poignant acting and cinematography make the film flow gently towards its graveyard end, while it is the actual story of Silkwood's life that leaves the deepest impression...