Marie Curie

I just saw this film at the San Francisco Film Festival. I already knew about Madame Curie's scientific achievements so I was interested in the personal aspects that this film revealed.

The sexist aspects are relevant today. A woman tries to get recognition for her scientific achievements but is thwarted almost every step of the way. Nevertheless, she persisted....

It's a beautiful film, the cinematography is excellent. It's got an artistic feeling that I didn't expect from this period piece.

Scientist Marie Curie inspired a lot of directors: Mervyn Le Roy's "Madame Curie " (1943) starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon stopped with the discovery of radium ; the MTV "une femme honorable" starring Marie-Christine Barrault in the eighties told her whole life ,including her affair ,passed over in silence by the MGM production (which in the end ,made sense ,for it happened after Pierre's death.)

"Marie curie " has a strong feminist side : it depicts Marie's struggle in a macho world ;when Albert Einstein -whom she actually met:there are famous photographs of both scientists walking and discussing in the country -tells he she's the most clever woman he has ever met ,Marie wryly answers "there's not much competition";she had to struggle to get her late husband 's chair (it's not a place that's passed down from husband to wife); her affair with Langevin gets unanimous thumbs down and meets the populace's hatred (If I were a man, my affair would be taken for granted).

Karolina Gruzka is a convincing scientist , who has "the courage of knowledge " ,at a time when a complete and utter fool could vote and a genius like her was not allowed to .

There are lessons to be learned from Mrs Curie's admirable life : she insists her work be useful to relieve the humanity's sufferings ( it was a brand new way to cure cancer) ;a great woman who gave all and who wanted to live just like a woman , that is to say ,with the right to be in love.

This is sadly not a film about a great woman who dedicated her life to science and paid the ultimate price in doing so. Rather it is simply yet another tedious promotion of today's feminist agenda telling us how terrible it was to be a woman in the past and (indirectly) how much we must strive to strengthen women's rights in the future. Marie Curie is simply the canvas used to restate this message for the millionth time.

It tells us nothing about her background, her early interests, her historical meeting with Pierre Curie or even the substance of the relationship between them. And most awful of all it tells us nothing of her actual work, how it was that Radium and Polonium were discovered and how this was received at the time.

Instead the film concentrates upon a series of soft porn, soft focus and heavily romantacised encounters between her and a married man whom she partnered after Pierre's death. Curie was then 44 and fairly full figured after having two daughters. But the actress in the film is nothing like that. She has a slim lithe body with perfectly neat compact breasts that would emulate a teenager. In short the woman who partnered a man becuase of shared scientific exploration is now displayed as a sex godess worthy of our admiration on physical grounds alone.

Do youself a favour. Chuck this film in the bin and watch the 1943 version instead. It is much much more rewarding.

I found the film interesting. I generally knew about Maria Skłodowska-Curie (she was a Pole, born and raised in Warsaw). I knew nothing about her personal life in Paris, which is the focus of this film.

The film looks more at her personal life and the large challenges she faced being a woman (and mother of two) in a Man's World. Worth seeing.

Here the woman playing Marie talks with an accent and most momentous events in her life are depicted during the duration of her most tumultuous years. I enjoyed very much all these details that makes the story comes out as real and true. Beautiful film.