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Goldie Hawn plays Kay Walsh and Ed Harris plays her husband, Jack, who enters the service in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Left alone, she--like many women who responded to the need for stateside "manpower"--takes a job at a factory and learns of the joys of hard, meaningful work.
A coworker named Lucky (Kurt Russell) tries to get Kay to go out with him. After many months, she succumbs to his attentions and they embark on an affair.
The film focuses on Kay and Lucky, but it is really about the social upheaval that occurred during WWII. By necessity, great strides were made in blurring the lines between the standard gender roles. After the war, there was some regression to prior roles, but the genie was already out of the bottle. It was the beginning of lasting changes.
Likewise, some rules of (moral) behavior were blurred or bent. In the film, the affair of Kay and Lucky is portrayed as a happy thing, though Kay surely feels guilt. But we also see that the friends and coworkers who surround them also accept their relationship--not necessarily on a permanent basis, but at least for the duration of the war, which to some extent has suspended the conventions of society. When Jack comes home on 48 hour leave, she says, "I'm not the same. And neither are you."
The film is not very subtle, but it really captures the era of the forties. The acting is solid but, as others have noted, Christine Lahti as the neighbor and coworker, Hazel, really stands out. For a more compelling film of this era, see "The Way We Were".
score 7/10
atlasmb 6 February 2016
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3409807/ |
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30-3-2021 00:05:07