The China Syndrome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the nuclear meltdown concept, see China Syndrome.
| The China Syndrome | |
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 The China Syndrome promotional movie poster |
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| Directed by | James Bridges |
| Produced by | Michael Douglas |
| Written by | Mike Gray T.S. Cook James Bridges |
| Starring | Jane Fonda Jack Lemmon Michael Douglas |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 16, 1979 |
| Running time | 122 min |
| Language | English |
| Gross revenue | 51.7 million[1] |
| IMDb profile | |
The China Syndrome is a 1979 thriller film which tells the story of a reporter and cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. It stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Scott Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd, and Wilford Brimley.
The movie was written by Mike Gray, T.S. Cook and James Bridges. It was directed by Bridges. The film illustrated the viewpoint that human depravity is of greater safety concern than flaws of technology.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Lemmon), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Fonda), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. The film was also nominated for the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival and Lemmon won Best Actor for his performance. The movie's script won the 1980 Writers Guild of America award.[2]
The title refers to the concept, mentioned only jokingly in the film, that if an American nuclear plant melts down, it will melt through the Earth until it reaches China (see China Syndrome).
The film was released on March 16, 1979, just twelve days before the real-life events at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. The Three Mile Island incident helped propel The China Syndrome into a blockbuster.[3][4]
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[edit] Plot
TV news reporter Kimberly Wells (Fonda) and her cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) visit the Ventana nuclear power plant outside Los Angeles as part of a series of news reports on energy production. While viewing the control room from an observation room, the plant goes through a reactor SCRAM (emergency shutdown). Shift supervisor Jack Godell (Lemmon) notices what he believes to be an unusual vibration during the SCRAM. Checking their gauges, the control room staff finds that water levels in the reactor core have risen to high levels; they begin opening relief valves in an effort to prevent too much water from damaging the plant. However, the needle in the water level gauge turns out to have been stuck, and when Godell taps the glass cover on the gauge, the needle rapidly drops to indicate that the water level is actually far too low, and the core has almost been uncovered. The staff begin restoring coolant systems, but for several agonizing minutes, the crew doesn't know whether the core is undergoing a meltdown or not. Eventually, backup systems are able to raise the water levels, and the reactor is brought under control.
In the observation room looking out over the control room, Adams began filming the activity below; when told he was not permitted to film the control room for security reasons, he surreptitiously tucks the camera under his arm and begins filming anyway. Because the glass is soundproof, the visitors can only guess as to what is happening.
When they return to the television station, the station's news director refuses to air the footage, fearing criminal prosecution. Adams, believing that there is more to the story than is indicated in the plant's official statement (which referred to the near-meltdown as an "unexpected transient"), steals the film from the station and shows it to a pair of experts, who are able to fill him in on what actually happened.
Meanwhile, Godell, suspecting there to be more to the strange vibration he felt at the beginning of the SCRAM, does some investigating of his own and uncovers evidence that the plant is unsafe. Specifically, he finds evidence to suggest that another reactor SCRAM at full power could cause the cooling system to be severely damaged. Godell asks the plant foreman to delay restarting the reactor until the main water pump can be disassembled and inspected, but he refuses, under pressure from the plant's owners. Godell then contacts Wells, asking her to help get his concerns heard. Wells and Adams agree to help get Godell's evidence entered at safety hearings for a new plant being built. Godell asks to remain anonymous, but when the original messenger is run off the road by hit men (presumably hired by the plant's owners), he decides he must appear at the safety hearings himself. On the way there, he is chased by more hit men, and finds safe harbor at the Ventana power plant where he works.
When Godell arrives, he finds the plant has been brought up to full power. Now convinced of the danger, he grabs a gun from the control room's security guard and forces everyone out. Once alone and secured inside the control room, he brings the power down to a safer level around 75% of full. He also tells the plant's managers that if anyone attempts to take control of the reactor from the outside or break in, he'll open valves and flood the containment building with radiation, essentially ruining the plant. He then demands to be interviewed live on television by Wells.
While Wells and Adams set up their equipment, plant technicians find a way to cause a reactor SCRAM. In the middle of the live interview, the SCRAM is started, the camera's cables are physically cut, and a SWAT team forces its way into the control room and shoots Godell dead. Proving Godell's fears true, however, the SCRAM causes significant damage to the plant, as portions of the cooling system physically collapse. The reactor is eventually brought under control by the plant's automatic systems.
Outside the plant, a phalanx of reporters and television crews are awaiting word on the events inside. When the plant spokesman suggests that Godell was "emotionally disturbed" and that he "had been drinking", Wells confronts the spokesman in front of the other reporters, and eventually gets one of Godell's co-workers (Brimley) to admit that Godell was not a "loony" and would not have taken such drastic steps had there not been something to his belief in problems with the plant.
[edit] Trivia
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- The Ventana power plant is an homage to both the nuclear power plant operated out of Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory (which suffered a partial meltdown in 1959) outside of Thousand Oaks, California, and the controversial Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant outside of San Luis Obispo, California (which was newly completed). Incidentally, the reactor at Rocketdyne was the first nuclear research reactor in California, and Ventura County's only nuclear plant. The reactor suffered numerous problems and was eventually shut down in the late 1950s. To this day, the reactor building remains, and numerous complaints of radioactivity in the ground soil (among rocket fuel contamination) have plagued Rocketdyne.
- The implication that the company's security people are willing to kill to silence a whistleblower echoes allegations made about the death of Karen Silkwood, who died in a 1974 automobile accident while on her way to meet with a reporter to disclose nuclear power safety violations.
- Aside from background music from jukeboxes, televisions and radios (including the Stephen Bishop song "Somewhere in Between", which is heard over a car radio during the opening credits) there is no musical soundtrack in the movie. The end credits are played over silence (a relatively unusual practice in American movies).
- According to the liner notes for Bishop's album On and On: The Hits of Stephen Bishop, the opening sequence of the film was edited to a different song. Bishop said "They already had a temporary song on the film that I thought was terrific. I asked him why he was replacing such a great record, and he said that it didn't fit the movie." The song in question was "What a Fool Believes" by the Doobie Brothers, which had not yet become a hit.
- According to American Movie Classics' 2006 series Movies That Shook the World, the Three Mile Island incident did not help The China Syndrome at the box office, because the producers did their best to avoid making it look like they were trying to cash in on the event, including pulling the movie from some theaters.
- As noted above, the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania happened just days after the film's release. In the film, a physicist says that the China Syndrome would render "an area the size of Pennsylvania" permanently uninhabitable.
- In an episode of The Simpsons entitled "The Trouble with Trillions", Homer states that he has not been fired "after three meltdowns and one China Syndrome".
- In the film Wet Hot American Summer, the camp director Beth tells Abbie to run the Betamax, because the kids in bunk eight want to watch The China Syndrome again. She says only "What can I say? They love it."
- Saturday Night Live did a skit called "The Pepsi Syndrome" about a meltdown at "Two Mile Island".
