Radioactive (2020)

 Score: 4 / 5

For a biopic, it's not particularly grounded in reality. But that's precisely what I so enjoyed about Radioactive, Marjane Satrapi's high-concept investigation of the life of Marie Curie. This isn't meant to be terribly realistic in terms of historical accuracy, and it's not meant to be measured by traditional standards of biographical movies. Satrapi and screenwriter Jack Thorne (known for eschewing timelines and choosing magic over the mundane) here turn Curie's life into a fascinating, time-jumping adventure into the famed woman's psyche. More importantly, they seem to consider her own opinions of her legacy, neither the glory or horrors of which she could have possibly known.

The always brilliant Rosamund Pike continues her streak of surprising us with unexpected characters and brutal emotions as the famed physicist and chemist. Working through the time jumps in Curie's story -- from her early professional career in 1890s Paris to her death in 1934 -- Pike fires on all fronts, stealing every scene even as she carries the movie. While her dialogue often pronounces its themes and motivations with total disregard for subtlety or complexity, she delivers it with enough conviction and pride that it usually sticks the landing. Relishing the pragmatism and fiery spirit of her character, Pike often squares off with Sam Riley, who plays the Polish immigrant's scientific partner and husband Pierre Curie. Some of my favorite scenes feature the two interrogating their feelings for each other as if using the scientific method to test their own emotional journeys.

Most fascinating about this uncommonly straightforward feminist project, however, is Satrapi's direction. Some might call it heavy-handed and artificial, but I'd liken it to a Tennessee Williams memory play; after all, it begins with the collapse of our protagonist shortly before her death, and the entirety of the film comprises flashbacks (and flash-forwards) as she reviews her life, thankfully without voiceover narration. As such, it features a dreamlike aesthetic wherein feelings and themes become literal symbols. When Pierre and Marie kiss for the first time, a large open flame in the background literalizes their bright, burning passion. Indeed, the picture is never less than beautiful to be hold, with much credit due to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, whose body of major work with Lars von Trier and Danny Boyle, among others, is never less than dazzling. The many laboratory scenes, which could so easily have been cold and clinical, are rendered through gorgeously filtered light, reinforcing the dreamlike aura of memory. And then there are the impossibly beautiful moments of Marie in a dark void -- usually while in emotional turmoil -- lit by the light of radioactive, emerald stars.

Even as the dialogue sometimes lacks depth, the same cannot be said for Radioactive's dramatic structure, and it is in this that the film most succeeds as a biopic. Sure, the actual plot follows concrete points in her life like those you might read in a children's biography book about women of science or Nobel Prize winners. It's not deep, but a good refresher for those of us who don't know everything about famous physicists, if you take it with grains of dramatic salt. But interspersed with her victories and failures are the (perhaps inevitable?) consequences of her discoveries. Brief scenes show a doctor offering radiation therapy to the father of a little boy dying of cancer, x-rays saving lives and limbs on battlefields, an atomic bomb dropping towards the Hiroshima skyline, and a particularly brutal transition into the Chernobyl disaster. It is this unique, consistent attention to a very palpable legacy that sets Radioactive apart from so many others of its ilk.