Radioactive
Directed by: Marjane Satrapi
Written by: Jack Thorne - Based on the graphic novel by Lauren Redniss
Starring: Rosamund Pike, Sam Riley, Aneurin Barnard, Simon Russell Beale, Sian Brooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Katherine Parkinson
Biography/Drama/Romance - 109 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 22 Jul 2020
Written by: Jack Thorne - Based on the graphic novel by Lauren Redniss
Starring: Rosamund Pike, Sam Riley, Aneurin Barnard, Simon Russell Beale, Sian Brooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Katherine Parkinson
Biography/Drama/Romance - 109 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 22 Jul 2020
Marie Curie’s discoveries altered the 20th century’s scientific vector, ushered in a new technological age, and cracked open secrets of nature some would argue were perhaps best left undiscovered. However, is Curie directly responsible for what later adopters of the applications of radioactivity were to do with her research? Director Marjane Satrapi seems to think so. There are quick vignettes of Hiroshima in 1945 and Chernobyl in 1986 which Satrapi overtly declares are legitimate offspring of the Parisian Polish immigrant’s efforts. Curie didn’t know what cuddling up to a vial of radium could do to the human body, but ignorance does not fly in this cinematic court of law.
Not only does Satrapi detail the sex discrimination and gender-bias Marie (Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl) encountered throughout her endeavors, with her fellow Parisian scientists, with the Nobel committee, and even with her neighbors who appointed themselves judge and jury over her personal life, but Satrapi also takes a dig at how films portray women scientists. Why are genius men allowed to be troubled and awkward? Women intellectuals are not afforded the same courtesy. Perhaps this is why Satrapi makes sure to include as many of Marie’s warts as she does accolades. The script wastes no time in showing Marie was severely off-putting and condescending to her colleagues explaining her isolation and social status at the rear of the scientific queue.
Not only does Satrapi detail the sex discrimination and gender-bias Marie (Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl) encountered throughout her endeavors, with her fellow Parisian scientists, with the Nobel committee, and even with her neighbors who appointed themselves judge and jury over her personal life, but Satrapi also takes a dig at how films portray women scientists. Why are genius men allowed to be troubled and awkward? Women intellectuals are not afforded the same courtesy. Perhaps this is why Satrapi makes sure to include as many of Marie’s warts as she does accolades. The script wastes no time in showing Marie was severely off-putting and condescending to her colleagues explaining her isolation and social status at the rear of the scientific queue.
We’re in biopic territory here, but Satrapi is known for adapting films from graphic novels, this one included - its source is “Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout” by Lauren Redniss. We skip the “she was born and raised” trope with an explanation of why Marie has a hospital phobia - while very young, she watches her mother die in a cold, hospital room. We skip how Marie achieved her first steps on the scientific ladder to where she begrudgingly accepts the offer of Pierre Curie (Sam Riley, Maleficent) to become her lab partner, research collaborator, and eventually, husband. Marie wanted to work alone and was quite adept at sidelining herself and her ideas just in case someone may be doing her a favor, or even worse, pity her.
Accolades and celebrity adorn the couple; however, Marie Curie the character remains aloof to us. Pike plays her reserved and pragmatic, but these directorial choices also border on the one-dimensional at times. There are episodes where Satrapi transforms the woman we know only from black and white photographs and trivia questions into an actual flesh-and-blood, sexual being whose temerity to be regarded as a feminine equal to the patriarchy ruffled plenty of French feathers. But a peculiar episode regarding scandal and home-wrecking feels shoved in to remind us Marie was not admired and respected in her own time. It seems ironic for the French above all to yell and scream about sexual peccadilloes considering…well…they’re the French! Yet, the whole episode comes off as window dressing leaving the audience with far more questions than answers.
Satrapi also plays with the camera either as a head nod toward the story’s graphic novel origin or to separate her work from the more benign biopic fare out there. Whatever her intentions, her quirky choices usually pay off. As the story puddle jumps around in time, certain frames are darkened in the corners to insinuate flashbacks or nostalgia. The vial of pure radium Marie cuddles with at night glows neon green and an avant-garde dancer turns vibrant hues as she swirls and contorts. The score adds some anachronistic bleep/bloop synths to evoke science. However, what really lets the film down is the clunky, anything but subtle script by Jack Thorne. Thorne also wrote The Aeronauts, about another opposite sex, but far less authentic, scientific duo. His ham-fisted dialogue undercuts Pike’s performance, but certainly cannot explain Riley’s habit of pronouncing his wife’s name differently every now and again. It’s not as absurd as say Sophia Coppola pronouncing her last name three different ways in the same scene in The Godfather III, but add it to the list.
The biopic genre can sometimes feel like the cinematic doldrums - you always hear about the phenomenal performance and how such and such was able to bring the subject to life, but it all too often goes down as cinematic vegetables. You will learn plenty of Marie Curie facts about what I am sure is a more complex life than is presented here, but it is not revelatory, riveting cinema. Satrapi earned an Oscar nomination for her first film, 2007’s Persepolis, about a teenaged girl growing up in revolutionary Tehran feeling like a fish out of water amidst the theocracy and in many ways, Marie harbors similar feelings being a Polish outsider in Paris working in a field which continues to put women in second place even in 2020. Even though Satrapi succeeds in distinguishing her biopic from the rest, I walked away knowing less about Marie Curie as a human being than I expected.
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