Getting a Second Chance

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Mike Nichols' "Regarding Henry," which premiered on this day 25 years ago, was about an unlikely second chance — and, in my opinion, it was Harrison Ford's finest performance.

I know, Ford is mostly known for his iconic roles as Han Solo and Indiana Jones — and, the more I think of it, Ford's performance in "Regarding Henry" may not have been his finest. Perhaps the better word would be challenging. I thought he did a remarkable job in meeting that challenge.

Ford played Henry, who was, at the start of the movie, a narcissistic lawyer (is that redundant?), too absorbed in his career to pay any attention to his wife (Annette Bening) and daughter (Mikki Allen). But then he got shot in the head when he interrupted a robbery at a convenience store, and the rest of the movie was about his struggle to regain his memory and his mobility.

And, as anyone in such a position would be expected to be, Ford's character was a changed person — not in that near–death experience kind of way in which the victim holds life to be more precious than he did before (and has been overdone on TV and in the movies) but in the sense that he was a completely different person.

(Roger Ebert wrote that Ford's former character had been a "taciturn taskmaster who treats his young daughter as if she were a balky client and his wife as a partner with whom he is friendly but not intimate. After the grievous wound to his brain, Henry recovers into an altogether more pleasant person.")

So, while Ford played a single character, it had two distinct and different personalities and tastes. In effect, they were two entirely different characters.

For example — and on a very basic level — the original Henry loved eggs for breakfast, but the post–shooting Henry didn't care for eggs at all.

On more significant levels, Henry did not recognize anyone he had known before the shooting — his wife, his daughter, his associates at the law firm, his mistress ...

You read that right. Mistress. A young woman from his office. As it turned out, Henry's wife had been having an affair with one of his colleagues. It was that kind of relationship — if you can call it a relationship.

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But things were different between them after the shooting. Henry's personality was almost childlike, dependent on and trusting of everyone. When he was told by his family that he loved eggs, he obediently ate the eggs that were given to him — even though the new Henry despised eggs. And he noticed — and appreciated — things he never noticed before, like his surroundings and the people in his life.

His discoveries about the kind of person he had been before the shooting were powerful moments. The movie was filled with powerful moments — yet after I had seen it, I felt that the movie was emotionally manipulative. Ebert appears to have agreed with me.

"There is possibly a good movie to be found somewhere within this story, but Mike Nichols has not found it," Ebert wrote. "This is a film of obvious and shallow contrivance, which aims without apology for easy emotional payoffs and tries to manipulate the audience with plot twists that belong in a sitcom."

It was telling, too, as Ebert observed, that Ford's personality and mental sophistication were conveniently childlike when they needed to be but almost as conniving as before the shooting when it suited the story.

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For example, before the shooting, it had been arranged that Henry's daughter would be going to a boarding school — a plan that the family at least attempted to carry out. The daughter was resistant, but Henry talked her into going ahead with it by telling her of a similar childhood experience he had on his first day of school and how everything worked out beautifully.

"That's sweet," his wife said after their daughter went off to join her new classmates. "I didn't know you remembered that."

"I don't," Henry replied.

It was an entertaining movie — but blatantly manipulative. Now, I don't have issues — in general — with manipulation, but it seems to me that you have to do some work to justify its use. As Ebert wrote, "Regarding Henry" went for "easy emotional payoffs." It wasn't above bending the facts (inasmuch as a fictional story can have any facts) to suit the purpose.

Was 'Silkwood' Snubbed?

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Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep): You think I contaminated myself? You think I did that?

Mace Hurley (Bruce McGill): I think you'd do just about anything to shut down this plant.

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"Silkwood," which was released in the theaters 30 years ago today, was a story about three ordinary — and flawed — people caught in an extraordinary situation at a plutonium plant in Oklahoma.

Meryl Streep played Karen Silkwood, a plant worker and a labor union activist. Her boyfriend Drew was played by Kurt Russell; he also worked at the plant. Cher (yes, that Cher) played Dolly, a lesbian and a roommate of Karen's and Drew's. Dolly worked at the plant as well.

The first part of the movie dealt with their day–to–day lives — Karen, for instance, was involved in a clash with her former common–law husband over time with their children. Drew and Dolly tried to be as supportive as possible. Working at the plant was a humdrum job, like any other humdrum job. The only real difference, as far as they were concerned, was that this job required workers to handle hazardous material, but the workers believed the risk was minimized, that they were protected by all the precautions their employers had taken.

But as the movie went on, it was established that the plant had taken on a large contract — and it had fallen behind. To make up for lost ground and lost time, the company was requiring employees to work long hours — and Karen, who had recently become active in the labor union, was convinced that the company was falsifying documents and cutting all kinds of corners, making conditions truly hazardous for the workers.

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In spite of the precautions that were in place, she and others had been contaminated during the course of their work. This was expected to a certain extent but not at either the rate or level they were seeing. That alone was suspicious, but Silkwood, in the course of her investigation, uncovered evidence of other abuses as well — so Silkwood became a whistleblower and agreed to meet a New York Times reporter with the evidence she had gathered. She never made the appointment. She died in a car accident. No documents were found with her body.

I thought that the acting was terrific, and I was pleased to learn that critic Roger Ebert felt the same way. "It's a little amazing," he wrote, "that established movie stars like Streep, Russell and Cher could disappear so completely into the everyday lives of these characters."

Amazing but true. Long before the end of the movie, I stopped being conscious of who the actors were and became aware only of who their characters were and the plight they faced.

Director Mike Nichols ("The Graduate") probably had his own ideas of why Silkwood died, and he didn't spare the company, but he left the door open for other conclusions as well. Nearly 40 years after Silkwood's death, much of it remains shrouded in mystery.

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Maybe the subject matter was a little too hot to handle for Oscar voters in those days. "Silkwood" got five Oscar nominations but zero wins.

"Silkwood" was just one of the movies for which Streep has earned an Academy Award nomination. Everyone knew how talented she was when "Silkwood" premiered. She had received four Oscar nominations already and had won two statuettes (but she wouldn't win another one until 2011).

Her co–star, Cher, also was nominated. It was her first, but she wouldn't win until she was nominated a second time.

Nichols' directing received a third Oscar nomination — and, for the second time, someone else took home the award.

"Silkwood" wasn't nominated for Best Picture, either. Was it snubbed? I don't know. I've seen "Terms of Endearment," the Best Picture winner 30 years ago, and I thought it was good.

It just wasn't as important as "Silkwood."

The Next Level

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Mid–December has been a good period for Dustin Hoffman.

As I observed earlier this week, mid–December is when some of his best movies were released — "Tootsie" and "Wag the Dog" observed milestone anniversaries a few days ago.

Hoffman had been appearing on stage and screen for several years, but "The Graduate," which was released on this day in 1967, was his first major role.

It was a truly remarkable performance — especially since Hoffman was 30 when it premiered. If you're too young to remember the 1960s, that was the time when the admonition "Don't trust anyone over 30" was popular with young Americans, and Hoffman's character, from all appearances, was well under 30.

He gave every indication of being a traditional college student — i.e., one who entered and completed college after finishing high school rather than one who entered the work force out of high school and returned to school several years later. He came from an affluent family, the kind of family in which it would be expected that children would go on to college after completing high school.

It seemed to me, when I saw the movie for the first time, that "The Graduate" was all about expectations, what was expected of someone and what was not expected. And 1967, with the emerging "generation gap" and the growing rebellion of the young of that time, provided the perfect backdrop for such a story. The music of Simon and Garfunkel was the icing on the cake.

Now, just because one is a traditional college student does not mean one follows the same path as his/her classmates. And Benjamin Braddock's post–college path was almost certainly not like the one many of his classmates followed.

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"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?"

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Benjamin was drifting, both in fact (in his parents' pool) and metaphorically, and he drifted into an affair with the wife of a family friend (Anne Bancroft), a situation that became even more complicated after he was introduced to her daughter (Katharine Ross) and fell in love with her.

It was already pretty comical. Clearly not very experienced in that sort of thing, Hoffman's clumsy meandering through the minefield of extramarital relationships was amusing in its way.

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"It's like I was playing some kind of game, but the rules don't make any sense to me. They're being made up by all the wrong people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up."

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In hindsight, I guess, it was an unbeatable combination — Mike Nichols, not too far removed from his directorial triumph with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in the director's chair producing a film on a topic that was the hottest around.

Dysfunction Junction

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I saw a movie this morning that I have seldom seen over the years — 1966's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Perhaps you aren't familiar with it. It has been nearly 45 years since it was showing in America's movie theaters. But you've certainly heard of its two stars — Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, both of whom were nominated for Oscars (Taylor won). And you may be familiar with their two co–stars — George Segal and Sandy Dennis, both of whom were nominated for Oscars (Dennis won).

In the public eye, Taylor was a svelte beauty, but she put on 30 pounds, radically altering her image, in order to play the frumpy Martha in the film version of Edward Albee's play. Burton, Taylor's husband at the time, also had an image as something of a sex symbol, thanks to his good looks, but he apparently also made some physical adjustments to meet the requirements of playing George the professor.

Actually, director Mike Nichols' original choices to play George and Martha were James Mason and Bette Davis, according to Edward Sikov's book about Davis. I've heard that he shared this information with the playwright, and Albee approved of the choices, particularly since the character of Martha refers to Davis and quotes her famous line from "Beyond the Forest" ("What a dump!") early in the film. In the end, though, Taylor and Burton got the roles as the dysfunctional couple.

At the heart of their dysfunction is the fact that they have never had children, a fact that is only hinted at through much of the film although, in hindsight, all the clues were there. But their guests — along with the audience — don't figure it out until near the end, after George and Martha have played their sadistic games designed to hurt everyone in sight.

Their most pointed barbs are aimed at each other, although their guests are hardly spared.

Suffice to say, it isn't a "feel good" flick. There's a lot of shouting and a lot of profanity — and not many terms of endearment. But it is an important film.

Taylor and Segal may never have made a film as good since. Certainly the now deceased Burton and Dennis didn't. And I would argue that Nichols, who was a first–time director when he made it, went on to direct only a few films that were as good or better, among them his next effort — "The Graduate."

For my money, it is one of the most important films of the second half of the 20th century. If you didn't see it this morning, when it aired on Turner Classic Movies' "31 Days of Oscar," I urge you to watch it when you can.