Marie Curie blinded us with science

Cast: Rosamund Pike,

Sam Riley Director: Marjane Satrapi

Duration: 1 h 49 m

Marie Curie was a giant among scientists. Winner of Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, she remains one of only two people ( the other being Linus Pauling) to be so honoured in two fields. She discovered two elements — radium and polonium, named after her native Poland — and had a third named for her, curium. She hypothesized that atoms ( from the Greek for indivisible) could in fact be split. She coined the word radioactive.

So you might be forgiven for wondering how a film that runs under two hours could even hope to encompass her achievements. Which, I’ve just remembered, also included running a mobile X- ray clinic on the battlefields of First World War France. And, no great surprise, Radioactive is a scattershot affair, trying as it does to cover everything from meeting her future husband, Pierre, in 1893 in Paris to her death in 1934 of complications from radiation poisoning.

Everybody is doing their best to keep up with her, mind you. This includes screenwriter Jack Thorne, adapting Lauren Redniss’s visual non- fiction book Marie & Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout.

Though I have to question his inclusion of no fewer than four flash- forwards, to the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, a radiation therapy ward in 1957 Cleveland, a nuclear test site in 1961 Nevada and the Chernobyl plant in 1986. Yes, we get that it’s a twoedged sword.

Also doing her darnedest is director Marjane Satrapi, still best known for her breakout first feature, the autobiographical 2007 animated film Persepolis. She even brings a touch of that animation expertise to a scene illustrating the inner workings of the uranium atom.

But it’s Rosamund Pike doing the heavy lifting in her latest turn as a real-life character. She’s also played a German terrorist ( 7 Days in Entebbe), a Nazi ( The Man with the Iron Heart) and the First Lady of Botswana (A United Kingdom), and that’s just in the last four years.

It takes a little time to figure out her character after the weirdest meet- cute in movie history: “Are you interested in microbiology?” asks her future husband (Sam Riley) without a trace of innuendo. Socially awkward, she seems at first to perhaps be on the autism spectrum ( a historical suspicion, though never confirmed), but she also possesses a wicked sense of humour, as when she meets one of her daughters’ suitors and insists on discussing science, telling him she’ll take his romantic feelings as read.

The film really excels in showing the back- breaking effort that went into a pursuit often thought of as no more strenuous than hoisting a test tube over a Bunsen burner. The Curies pulverize, boil and chemically treat several tonnes of pitchblend to produce a smidgen of radium. ( And then, rather alarmingly, keep it close to them at all times.) And Marie struggles for social acceptance, not least thanks to a publicized affair with a married man after her husband’s death.

It’s a storied life, and deserves more depth and nuance than Radioactive can ultimately deliver. But perhaps the winner of multiple Nobel Prizes and discoverer of multiple elements will yet receive multiple biopics. Curie’s story is one I’d happily revisit. ΠΠ•