The China Syndrome (1979) [Special Edition] – DVD

**½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Scott Brady
screenplay by Mike Gray & T.S. Cook and James Bridges
directed by James Bridges

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover For long passages, The China Syndrome is the usual Hollywood liberal tripe. A compendium of "social issues" more name-checked than dealt with, it was clearly assembled for the greater glory of a bunch of rich white entertainment professionals rather than for the oppressed and threatened individuals who have been forced from centre stage. So obsessed with the spectacle of the principal cast being heroic is The China Syndrome that for an agonizing stretch, it fails to communicate anything besides the nobility of Hanoi Jane. But though the film is boring to look at and painful to listen to for an hour or so, once it sorts out its priorities, it has a certain grip as a spooky end-of-days industrial thriller. What the film says about nuclear power could be fit into twenty words or less, but it says it loudly and clearly and with enough editorial skill to help you forget the sins of that sluggish first half. Whether that serves the "message" I leave entirely up to you.

The film is nobody's idea of radical thought: beginning with some obvious post-Network observations on the devolution of the evening news (idiotic witty banter, pointless coverage of a singing telegram), it spares no expense in simultaneously addressing and avoiding the issues. Case in point, the film's newscaster, Kimberly Wells (Fonda): she's ostensibly designed to demonstrate the unjust treatment of women in the news as pretty faces granted no journalistic power, yet all of her moves are prompted by renegade cameraman Richard Adams (Michael Douglas). When the two witness an accident at a nuke facility while preparing a puff piece on energy sources, Adams has the foresight to sneak shots of the ensuing chaos–and Kimberly's character hinges on dealing with the, um, fallout of his initiative as the news station decides to lock the footage deep in their vaults. Her narrative purpose is thus to validate what a man has done, compromising the strength of her individuality: God forbid Kimberly have integrity of her own to begin with.

And so The China Syndrome goes on its literal-minded way, rendering in broad strokes what ought to have a little shading at least. As Jack Godell, Jack Lemmon assumes the classic tortured-whistleblower role: knowing that the power company has been lax in its inspections in order to save money, Godell hastily morphs from an ambivalent company man into a saviour-martyr, with anchorwoman and cameraman swinging into action to shield him from encroaching goons. But as both Jack and the reporters' smiley-faced token Hispanic assistant nearly get Karen Silkwood-ed into permanent silence, The China Syndrome becomes less about the glory of Fonda and Douglas and more about whether or not the reactor will blow up–which actually states the film's case far more powerfully than the obvious "character development" preceding it. The picture is still sketchy at this point, but intensely sketchy, and as Godell hijacks the control room while the suits try to override it, we wonder if this will end with the apocalypse so completely denied us by other films.

I was surprised at how this climax crept up on me. For sixty minutes, I sat there slapping my head at every compromised and wrong-headed placard the movie waved (to say nothing of James Bridges's bland, high-key direction), but as it appeared that something other than ego-inflation was about to take place, the film acquired a gravity it didn't previously possess. Though not the gravity of real art or analysis, it nevertheless provided a sense that something utterly catastrophic was on the horizon. And as this involved action and not just people talking, something approaching filmmaking began to assert itself–the intercutting of the various players, however silent-movie, damsel-on-the-rails it may ultimately be, is undeniably expert and grabbed hold of my sensibilities. This doesn't make The China Syndrome good so much as satisfying on some base level–probably not the level the filmmakers were hoping for, but it prevents the picture from becoming utterly disposable. Now if we could get a film that thinks like this movie cuts, we'd have ourselves a party.

THE DVD
Columbia TriStar's Special Edition DVD reissue of The China Syndrome is hit and miss. In the miss department, an unattractive grain bedevils the 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen image, which looks a tad oversaturated to boot. (Still, these problems aren't a deal-breaker.) The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix is quite good in comparison, sparking to life during the final confrontation with many powerful surround and subwoofer effects. A pair of surprisingly thorough Laurent Bouzereau documentaries additionally help even the score. "Fusion of Talent" (27 mins.) details the basic creative elements, from the merging of two competing nuclear power scripts to the casting and the acting choices of interviewees Fonda and Douglas. There are a few embarrassing celebrity-isms (Fonda dying her hair red in tribute to Brenda Starr; the late Bridges constantly praying that he do the material justice), and the participants seem to feel that the film is more radical than it really is (the use of that Hispanic second banana is apparently proof of "multiculturalism"), but it's a fascinating exploration of the strange course a film takes on the way to production.

Meanwhile, "Creating a Controversy" (29 mins.) intersperses technical information on how the reactor was re-created (matte paintings and soundstages, mostly) with a debate on the viability of nuclear energy and the fateful intersection of the film's release with the Three Mile Island accident. While this piece isn't as focused on The China Syndrome itself as the previous featurette, it touches on such things as Lemmon's annoyance at having his best scenes (two of which are included in a separate section containing deleted footage) cut. Filmographies for Fonda, Douglas, Lemmon, and Bridges plus trailers for Fail-Safe, The Fog of War, and Secret Window round out the disc.

122 minutes; PG; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English DD 2.0 (Mono), French DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, French, Japanese, Cantonese, Thai subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Columbia TriStar