RADIOACTIVE SHOWS THE BEAUTY OF SCIENCE

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES GAVE HUMANITY A MERCURIAL QUALITY

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

That smallest of particles changed the world according to a new biopic.

Director Marjane Satrapi layers in movie art and science on top of a subtle gender inequality back story that is left to run ever present behind the main narrative.

Satrapi casts Rosamund Pike in the lead role as Marie Curie in the biopic Radioactive (2020).

Pike develops an introverted, reserved character to depict the world famous scientist, even struggling to show a bit of muted pleasure in meeting her future husband, Pierre Curie, played by Sam Riley, and of course, in discovering a new element for the Periodic Table of elements.

Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henry Becquerel for their theories of radioactivity in 1903. Curie also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering Polonium and Radium in 1911. Curie’s daughter, Irene, also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband, Frederic Joliet-Curie, for discovering artificial radioactivity in 1935.

Satrapi depicts the scientific discoveries more than the personalities behind the discoveries. The many artful scenes mask this clinical storyline about life in a laboratory. Of course, the whole world already knows why Curie is so famous. And although Pike does create a distinct personality for the film, the script lacks a bit of intrigue and suspense as a result of the world-wide notoriety.

Pike performs through different phases of Curie’s life with the assistance of the make-up department that makes the character’s age in relation to the narrative, including a wraparound of an older Curie.

Satrapi also shifts in time as if Curie may as well have invented a radium fueled time machine. Once the wrap around is dealt with, the narrative is rather linear with a flash back to Pierre’s childhood, and most interestingly, several flash forwards to the impact on the future the discoveries had on world history.

Satrapi runs the narrative momentarily into the future to show Curie’s discoveries led to cancer treatment, nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Curie also developed mobile radiography units for X-Rays on the World War I battlefield during her lifetime.

Science is not used as the narrative device but instead for the creative camera work, with the camera panning through period sets and passed authentic costumes and props, and for several creative scene montages.

Radioactive has the atmosphere of the period, costume drama genre with the biopic material being set from approximately when Curie moves to Paris in 1891 until her death in 1934.

Satrapi does have one obvious problem with time fraud when she compresses four years into a few minutes in depicting the hard work in the lab crushing tons of rock to extract a few drops of radium for further experiments.

Scenes generally bleed well from scene to scene, though. Even the flash forwards are almost seamless, including one particular series of scenes during which a fire truck screams passed Curie from movie ‘realtime’ in Paris into the future Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident site on April 26, 1986.

Pike shows how Curie and the world around her are oblivious and almost reckless as to the harm that her discoveries are causing. And Pike generally makes her character appear haunted by that future with the help of several haunting scenes, including flash forwards to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

Satrapi does use a movie score, although too sparingly, and as a result, the director does not compensate enough for the lack of intrigue in the narrative.

The script also seems like a missed opportunity to talk more thoroughly about the gender inequality that existed at the time and how that social circumstance evolved into the challenges female professionals face in the contemporary world.

Radioactive is a good, and rather beautiful film, though.

Satrapi uses clever camera work, often panning behind props to create a montage and then layering on a montage of images before going to shots of pure aesthetics. The film is shot rather dark to depict the time before house to house electricity and lightbulbs in the ceilings, but then many colours and unique images are thrown on top of the dark portraits and their long shadows.

All the movie tricks tingle the audiences sensory preceptors, without overwhelming the important biopic content about a very famous professional woman.

Radioactive is streaming on Amazon Prime in the United States, and on Apple TV in Canada.