Radioactive (2019)

(On Cable TV, January 2021) I was, really, really primed to like Radioactivity. I’ve always liked the story of Marie Curie, and I’ve liked much of director Marjane Satrapi’s work in different media. But the result steadily slips sideways the longer it goes on, to a point where I can’t really recommend the results. This is the third film about Marie Curie that I’ve seen in the span of a year, and if it’s easily the more technically polished, it ranks a distant third behind the classic 1943 Greer Garson biopic, and the far more comedic 1997 Les Palmes de M. Schutz. Proudly going for the obvious angle of presenting Curie as a feminist icon, Radioactive overplays its hand to the point of becoming unlikable, distorting the historical records and losing itself in tangents. The entire film is a flashback from Curie’s death that eventually flashforwards to events occurring decades later, and while the effect isn’t confusing, it’s scattered in a way that diminishes the film. The romance between Curie and her husband gets far less screen time considering that at least half the film is set after her famous discoveries, and the film sufficiently deviates from the record to have Curie physically assault her husband in a rage that has no basis in history. To be clear: I am not opposed to movies taking liberties with history (as was the case in the two other films I keep comparing Radioactive to), but when a movie about a scientist released in information-rich 2019 starts messing with fact in order to hammer thematic points that are already perfectly obvious, my disenchantment overweighs whatever admiration I can have for other aspects of the film. Technically, it’s up to the state of the art, using CGI and editing to blur one period with another, move back and forth in time and present her heroine in the best possible light. Rosamund Pike is really good in the lead role, but the film shouts its themes over her performance to an extent that diminishes the good work she does. It’s a deep paradox that while Radioactive is all about Marie Curie, she’s far less likable or admirable here than in the other two movies about her.