Radioactive. (12A.)
Directed by Marjane Satrapi.
Starring Rosamund Pike, Sam Riley, Aneurin Barnard, Anya Taylor-Joy, Katherine Parkinson and Simon Russell Beale. Streaming now. Limited cinema release. Out of Blu-ray/ DVD. 110 mins.
It may be radioactive but this Marie Curie biopic doesn't generate much electricity; though, were you in need, it could provide a quantity of firewood. It is remarkable how quite so many talented elements can be combined to produce something so thoroughly stilted and lifeless. Rather than some magical element, the film seems to have uncovered a thespian lurgy that strikes down everybody in cast.
Infuriatingly, if it had been any good it would have been really good. Instead of being simply another tale of a great maverick genius, it wants to be a biopic of her discovery and its checkered contribution to human history. So, at points during the recreation of Polish immigrant Marie (Pike) meeting up with and falling in love with Pierre Curie (Riley), rattling the Parisian scientific community - initially by being a forthright lady and then by discovering Radium - the film flips forward to the consequences: Hiroshima; nuclear testing in Los Alamos; a boy receiving radiotherapy; even Chernobyl. You appreciate the scale of the ambition even as you are crushed by the flatness of its presentation. Most of the film is dull speeches set in an idealized Paris where everybody speaks perfectly enunciated English.
Directed by Marjane Satrapi.
Starring Rosamund Pike, Sam Riley, Aneurin Barnard, Anya Taylor-Joy, Katherine Parkinson and Simon Russell Beale. Streaming now. Limited cinema release. Out of Blu-ray/ DVD. 110 mins.
It may be radioactive but this Marie Curie biopic doesn't generate much electricity; though, were you in need, it could provide a quantity of firewood. It is remarkable how quite so many talented elements can be combined to produce something so thoroughly stilted and lifeless. Rather than some magical element, the film seems to have uncovered a thespian lurgy that strikes down everybody in cast.
Infuriatingly, if it had been any good it would have been really good. Instead of being simply another tale of a great maverick genius, it wants to be a biopic of her discovery and its checkered contribution to human history. So, at points during the recreation of Polish immigrant Marie (Pike) meeting up with and falling in love with Pierre Curie (Riley), rattling the Parisian scientific community - initially by being a forthright lady and then by discovering Radium - the film flips forward to the consequences: Hiroshima; nuclear testing in Los Alamos; a boy receiving radiotherapy; even Chernobyl. You appreciate the scale of the ambition even as you are crushed by the flatness of its presentation. Most of the film is dull speeches set in an idealized Paris where everybody speaks perfectly enunciated English.
