Andrew Sarris

“....Neither [Silkwood nor Gorky Park] is an ideal project for a movie, Silkwood being based on real-life incidents in the life of a shadowy martyr of our political mythology ... What pulls both pictures through are unusually strong and sensitive performances in the central roles. It is not surprising, therefore, that both movies work much better from moment to moment than from beginning to end….

“…. Not all of Silkwood's messy young life is on display in the movie. Some of the missing portions would have made her look better, some would have made her look worse. On the whole, however, director Mike Nichols and scenarists Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen have chosen to sink or swim with a heroine of considerable complexity and often disconcerting directness.

“In one scene, particularly, she rather spectacularly embarrasses an unfriendly male co-worker by flashing a tit at him with derisively antierotic abruptness. This brazen gesture separates her from such warmly womanly underdogs as Norma Rae and Sophie, all the way back to Mildred Pierce and Madelon Claudet in the gallery of female sufferers who win Oscars. Streep's Silkwood is made of much sturdier and carser fabric than silk. There are traces of blue collar redneck, and country roads in her temperament, but she is smarter, freer, and wilder than the convenient stereotypes.

“What justifiably unleashes all the furies and fussy mannerisms in Streep's arsenal of acting stratagems is the very real fear of chemical contamination that plagues us all in one way or another. The players around Streep are first-rate as well….

“Yet Streep dominates the proceedings with the kind of fierce, cranky individualism that is at the root of all social unrest and human progress. There is a scene early on when she and her live-in companions take the children she has abandoned from a previous marriage out to a fast-food emporium. In those few moments of aching family reunion, there is more lifelike pain, humor, guilt, and, yes, grace under impossible pressure, than there is in all of Terms of Endearment.

“Ultimately, the earthy verisimilitude of the characters makes their predicament in a plutonium plant all the more horrifying . . . . The fear of libel may have inhibited [Nichols and his scenarists] from even a hypothesis about what actually happened. Still, I applaud them for going the opposite route from Star 80 by venturing into the inner life of a vibrant, sensual, confused, and ultimately heroic woman.”

Andrew Sarris
Village Voice, December 27?, 1983

“I would have split my vote [for Best Actress of 1983] between Patricia Hodge in Betrayed and Streep, though after mean-mouth ["mouthed"? not sure--my copy's hand-written] Meryl's ungracious remarks at two consecutive Sardi's award ceremonies, I would have to close my eyes as I marked my ballot.”

Sarris
Village Voice, March 6, 1984