Marie Curie

The movie painted an interesting portrait on the life of the only person in history to receive two Nobel prizes in different fields. Or at least it tried to. But it dwelt too much on her relationship with a married man which derailed the story.

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.

Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge (2016) is a Polish/French film co-written and directed by Marie Noelle

The wonderful Polish actor Karolina Gruszka stars as Marie Curie. Charles Berling portrays Pierre Curie, and Arieh Worthalter plays Paul Langevin, a married scientist with whom Marie had an affair.

If you're looking for a movie that explains Marie Curie's discoveries, and how she arrived at them, this isn't that film. If you're looking for a movie that portrays Marie Curie as a brilliant scientist, and a young widow that does, indeed, have an affair, this is that film.

This movie portrays the plight of women scientists in the early 20th Century. Male scientists simply wouldn't accept the fact that a woman could be a brilliant scientist. We know that Marie Curie was brilliant--she won two Nobel prizes. The scientists of her day must have known that she was brilliant, but it was easy to ignore this fact because she was a woman. Think of how many frustrated women lived their lives with their intellect undiscovered. Think of the great minds that were lost to science. These are not happy thoughts, but they reflect reality.

I enjoyed this movie. We had seen Karolina Gruszka in another Polish movie--The Happiness of the World. She is a brilliant actor. Directors love to photograph Gruszka getting into and out of her bath. Who can blame them? (She must be the cleanest actor in Poland.)

For whatever reason, this film has a ghastly IMDb rating of 5.9. This is one of those situations where I say, "Did they see the same film I saw?" It's not a perfect movie, but it's a very good one.

We saw the film at Rochester's excellent Little Theatre, as part of the great Rochester Polish Film Festival . It will work well on the small screen. My advice--ignore the IMDb rating and watch this movie. I think you won't be disappointed.

If you expect a literal scientific bio of Marie Curie, it is not that film. However, Marie Noelle focuses on the protagonist as a woman, first of all, and then as a scientist fighting in the world of men-dominated academia. And this selection makes the film particularly interesting. Beautifully shot, with masterfully selected music, and splendid performance of Karolina Gruszka. You can watch it as a love story or more as a dedication to your love. A very inspiring tale of tenacity and courage.

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.