Spoilers Alert:
“Not another Marie Curie biopic!” is what you think at first, considering that there are already various films about the scientist and radioactivity discoverer. But Marjane Satrapi approaches the interesting woman MARIE CURIE – Radioactive in a new way. We reveal more about this in our review.
A Life for Science: Marie Curie.
While the love story between Marie and Pierre, which takes place on both an intellectual and emotional level, is relatively straightforward, the makers allow themselves a few dramatic tricks to illustrate how the discovery of radioactivity has affected humanity. Satrapi creates some dark nightmare sequences that showcase Curie’s inner conflict to great effect. In addition, scenes of cancer radiation and the effects of a detonated atomic bomb show the many ways in which Curie’s discovery was later used and, above all, misused. Although these scenes clearly stand out stylistically and sometimes even have the character of a video clip, they are anything but gimmicky, but work excellently as a visual representation of Marie Curie’s state of mind.
“Marjane Satrapi makes no secret of the fact that “Marie Curie” is not just about the title heroine, but also about her husband. Since the couple complemented each other excellently in their research, the discovery of radioactivity was only possible thanks to both of them.”
“Gone Girl” actress Rosamund Pike, who was cast by Satrapi primarily because of her intelligence, manages to oscillate very subtly in her performance between the passion for her research and its countless painful long-term consequences, which means that Curie is never perfect, but rather human and seems approachable – although during her lifetime she was described as a complicated and difficult woman to understand. Especially in conjunction with Sam Riley (“Maleficent: Forces of Darkness”) you always get to know the young woman from her fragile side. The film actually succeeds in showing Marie Curie in all her facets.
Conclusion: Director Marjane Satrapi largely does justice to the many themes addressed in “Marie Curie – Elements of Life” and, with the help of genre elements, stages an extraordinary biopic about an extraordinary woman that captures all of her facets.
“Radioactive” can be seen in USA cinemas from July 16th.
