Radioactive Parent Guide

In 1976, Harvard historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote “Well behaved women seldom make history.” Marie Curie, who died in 1934, obviously never read Ulrich’s words, but they could certainly serve as her life’s motto. As Radioactive clearly shows, becoming a successful female scientist at the turn of the century required a certain level of what society considered unacceptable female behavior.

Radioactive opens with Marie Sklodowska (Rosamund Pike), 26 years old, and fighting for respect from the scientific establishment in Paris. The young Polish émigré has just been evicted from her current lab because she’s considered difficult to work with. At loose ends, she is fortunate to run into Pierre Curie (Sam Riley), who offers her space in his laboratory. Demonstrating her imperious and prickly personality, Marie informs him that she will not be his mistress and that she refuses to work collaboratively. Luckily, Curie persuades her that his respect for her achievements is genuine and that working together will increase their abilities to make significant scientific discoveries. History bears him out – the couple (who married in 1895) discovered radium and polonium, won the Nobel Prize, and launched the world into the nuclear age.

Radioactive’s power comes from the steely performance of Rosamund Pike, who refuses to turn the film into a hagiography. Her portrayal is of a complex woman who is brilliant, driven, arrogant, combative, and so scarred by her mother’s death that she refuses to enter hospitals. She is a devoted, loving wife, and a brisk, sometimes unfeeling mother. She is devastated by Pierre Curie’s accidental death in 1906 but five years later has an affair with a married colleague – the exposure of which would trigger a public scandal. And she was to win a second Nobel Prize, the only woman to do so. Her status as an icon for aspiring female scientists is unassailable.

Parents or teachers looking for a film that features female scientists will appreciate this depiction of Marie Curie’s many achievements, but they will also want to be aware of the film’s content issues. There is an extended nude scene of the Curies’ honeymoon; the couple are shown skinny dipping and sunbathing, with full back nudity and a brief view of female breasts. There are also scenes of sexual activity, but the light is dim and there is no explicit nudity.

The content issues are unfortunate because Radioactive does more than simply offer a biopic of a remarkable scientist. As it weaves between Curie’s life and clips showing the future uses of her discoveries (medical radiation therapy, Hiroshima, Chernobyl), the movie raises questions both personal and global. How do female scientists balance career aspirations and family life? How do we remove barriers that prevent gifted scientists from making a contribution to scientific knowledge? To what extent are scientists responsible for what’s done with their discoveries? Was the discovery of radioactivity a blessing or a curse? These questions have a very long half life and are worth serious examination.