A story of the scientific and romantic passions of Marie Sklodowska-Curie (Polish scientist) and Pierre Curie, and the reverberation of their discoveries throughout the 20th century.
Marjane Satrapi — the filmmaker behind the wildly original “Persepolis,” “Chicken with Plums,” and “The Voices” — goes back to basics with “Radioactive,” a formulaic, dry-as-prunes biopic. It’s really quite remarkable how such an impassioned, eloquent talent managed to produce something so devoid of passion or eloquence. With nary an original atom in its skeletal body, “Radioactive” fuses dull history with chemistry lecture, which results in a “new element”: boredom.
The narrative follows the most conventional of structures. It begins with Marie Curie (Rosamund Pike), old and dying from leukemia, then flashes back to a young and aspiring Marie, and tracks her life between those points, in a mostly linear, fragmented fashion. Marie meets her colleague and husband-to-be, Pierre (Sam Riley). The two scientists search for a new element, but after four years and a baby, end up discovering two new elements: polonium and radium. This leads to winning the Nobel Prize, which in turn leads to the surfacing of the blatant sexism and prejudice that is still very much prevalent today.
Marie perseveres, against all odds — even when her husband passes, even when she is told by the Nobel Prize committee to “avoid controversy” and not show up, even when she is denied funds while fighting for WWI amputees. Her daughter Irène grows up into the increasingly annoying screen presence that is Anya Taylor-Joy; like her mother, she puts her values ahead of herself, fighting the good fight. The film mostly focuses on Marie’s plight as an obsessed, resilient, highly intelligent scientist with good intentions, casting a fleeting look at the horrid repercussions of the Curies’ discoveries (such as Chernobyl, which the film oddly depicts as a phantasmagoric cataclysm).
The viewers get irradiated by biopic clichés from the first minute. You name it, it’s here: sappy music, flashbacks-within-flashbacks, predictable plot, blatant speechifying, and bottom-of-the-barrel cheesy dialogue (“Did you hear that? That was the sound of the world turning in a new direction,” “Even when I think of myself as a boy, I see you there.”). Screenwriter Jack Thorne leaves no proverbial ore unmined, which makes me nervous about his upcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s marvelous “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.”
Pike is an alluring screen presence, always managing to surprise. Even here, she (barely) holds it all together with a crazed intensity. Her utter commitment to the project culminates in the scene where she mourns her husband (“Please, can you make my husband appear?” she pleads, one-hundred-and-forty-three times). The rest of the cast dutifully tries to keep up but gets mired in the swamp of stereotypes.
Cinematographer extraordinaire Anthony Don Mantle shoots everything through an “aged-film” prism, the edges of the screen darkened and blurred — a wearying/distracting gimmick that adds little to the proceedings. There is one masterfully-executed sequence involving an atomic testing site that serves as a reminder of the originality of Satrapi’s talent, but it’s too little, too late.
The key art proclaims Marie Curie as a pioneer, a genius, and a rebel. None of these words apply to Satrapi’s by-the-numbers biopic. Sadly, this will come and go, decaying forever in the half-life graveyard of mediocre cinema.
Available to stream on Amazon Prime Video Friday, July 24th
