Rosamund Pike brings Marie Curie to life in ‘Radioactive’
The time is right for “Radioactive,” a compelling new drama examining the scientific advancements of the twotime Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie, whose discoveries shaped the world as we know it.
“I think it’s exciting to see a story about this fierce female, for a start,” said Academy Award nominee Rosamund Pike, who stars in “Radioactive” as Curie. “I think (in) any moment she’s very unique and she’s amusing because she’s so defiantly herself.
“But I think there has been a big interest in science. I would estimate, and I’m sure that all the algorithms of probably your newspaper and all kinds of other publications could probably confirm, that there’s been many more articles read about science in the last few months than ever before. That’s my guess. I know from the amount that I’m being fed that that’s probably the case. So I think that there is an appetite and interest.”
Directed by Marjane Satrapi, whose 2007 feature adaptation of her autobiographical graphic novel “Persepolis” was nominated for an Academy Award, “Radioactive” boasts a screenplay by Jack Thorne adapted from the graphic novel “Radioactive: Marie and Peter Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout” by Lauren Redness.
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, “Radioactive” is arriving at a time when science is undeniably at the forefront of public consciousness — probably because we’re all living through a global pandemic.
“I think science is sort of becoming sexy again,” said Pike, an Oscar nominee for her chilling work in David Fincher’s 2014 adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl.” “And I think I’ve always found science sexy and that Marjane Satrapi ... has (too), and we wanted to show that scientific discovery comes from people with great passion and great curiosity and appetite for life, that those are the hallmarks of the scientist, really. So I hope that people will sort of meet the film with the mindset that we intend, which is to learn about a woman but also to see a biography of radioactivity, to experience a scientific phenomenon in all its magnificence and awesomeness.”
The bulk of “Radioactive” is set in Paris of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as Satrapi vividly chronicles Curie and her husband Pierre’s work together that would result in the discovery of the elements radium and polonium.
But the film is incredibly concerned with the personal and global consequences of scientific advancement. There’s a horrific beauty to scenes of Pike’s Curie in bed, the room illuminated by the green glow emanating from a vial of radioactive material.
Satrapi also takes the macroscopic view of history, examining how the Curies’ discoveries reverberated throughout history into the present day. It’s an innovative, unconventional approach to the too-often-standardized biopic genre.
“I think a sort of conventional film about a deeply unconventional woman would have been a disservice to her,” Pike said. “I think she was original and it needed an original take. And when I knew that Marjane Satrapi was going to direct it I thought, ‘Well, she’s going to get it. She’s going to understand it, she’s going to sort of explode the bubble. She’s not going to play nice, she’s going to kind of jump right inside the brain of this woman rather than package her from the outside.’
“And as such, I feel like we legitimately jump forward in time because I think if anyone has inklings about the consequences of the future then it’s someone with a mind like Marie Curie.”
Satrapi’s depiction of Curie’s impact, and her characterization of the scientist herself, is best summed up by a line from the film, delivered by Pike in a lecture on radium: “It does not behave as it should.”
Pike said that line was crucial for her depiction of Curie.
“That line was also my cue of how to play her,” Pike said. “In fact, that is a description of her – I’m going to play her as an unruly element who does not always behave as it should. So that was really my sort of benchmark: She doesn’t behave as she should, or how people expect a woman to behave or however you’d like to put it. But she’s unpredictable. She’s forceful. She’s uncontainable. She’s sort of irascible. She’s defiant and surprising, and she emits a lot of energy, I suppose. So that was definitely my cue.
“And I think unruliness is something I’m very interested in exploring in women, in female characters. I think unruliness is something, it’s sort of on the tips of people’s tongues now, I think. The sort of tidy feminine mystique is slightly on the way out and the unruly woman is kind of waiting in the wings to take her place. But it’s not an easy transition because women have historically been easier to take if they fit in.”