Madame Curie: A Movie Review

“Science has great beauty and with its great spiritual strength within time cleanses this world of its evilness, its ignorance, its poverty, diseases, wars, and heartaches.” – Marie Curie, Madame Curie (1943)

The movie Madame Curie is definitely something every Science student should watch. Equipped with wonderful lessons about research and scientific works, the movie will leave you spellbound for hours.

It is Marie Curie’s determination and passion that paved way to her success in discovering radium and its isolation from barium. These characteristics combined with curiosity, hard work and wisdom should be present in all aspiring scientists of today’s generation.

Marie Curie’s curiosity about Becquerel’s work bothered her for quite some time. She thought it was foolish but through Pierre’s encouragement, she started developing experiments that could prove her theories. Nowadays, with several discoveries popping up almost everyday, each one of us should not be discouraged to look for new and unknown things because there are still a lot to be discovered and studied; we just have to stick our nose in the right place at the right time.

As their work progressed, they ask the help from the University. They wanted to have a bigger laboratory so that they could continue their work without hassle. However, they were given a place worse than a warehouse – a dirty lab with no equipment at all, water leaked during rainy season. Pierre decided against it but Marie’s humility made them accept the offer. With this in mind, every aspiring scientist should never ever be arrogant. Confident, yes, but not arrogant. For in humility, we are lifted and raised to something great we could never imagine.

Once they accepted the offer, the couple used their limited resources to carry out their experiment. They began improvising equipment that could be used to achieve what they want, that is, the isolation of radium. Months turned into years, but they were still unsuccessful in isolating radium. But with determined hearts and passion, they still continued their experiment, analyzing every step to determine if errors were present in their experiment and rechecking and rechecking their computations for any possible miscalculations. Since students like us are just starting our careers in the field of research, it is very advisable if we know how to be resourceful since we do not have that large financial assistance to accommodate the needs of our research. Likewise, every student should have a determined mind and passionate heart to finish their research. It is true that not all the time we will get a positive result. There will come a time that we a negative result will be produced or no result at all. But still, negative or no result is still a result. Hence, we should not give up rather we should be more determined and hardworking to get the result we want to achieve. Lastly, we should be wiser, be well-researched, and be a critical thinker so that we can be the best researchers/scientists of today’s generations.

“But no one of us can do much. If each of us, perhaps can catch some gleam of knowledge which modesty lose its efficient of itself, add to man’s dream of truth. It is by these small candles in our darkness that we see before us little by little the dim outlines of that great plan that shapes the universe.” – Marie Curie, Madame Curie (1943)