Film Review: Radium Girls Confronts The Horrors of American Corruption
Directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler, Radium Girls may be set in the 1920s but its themes are totally 2020. A good, historical epic understands that the tragedy of time could be in how much it does not change. Radium Girls brings to the light the struggles between the rich and powerful versus the poor and underprivileged, and how that battle is amplified when it is a wealthy man against an impoverished girl. Yet, like David standing against Goliath, history provides hope with its surprise changes.
The film follows sisters Bessie (Joey King) and Josephine (Abby Quinn) whom work at a factory, U.S. Radium, where they apply radium paint of clock dials. While young, the film immediately sets up that the sisters are the main source of money in their household, but that still does not mean they are the head of it. In fact, as women they are not leaders in any role within their life, but tragedy and injustice have a way of emboldening even a “non-leader” to become a revolutionary. As the hard-working Josephine becomes gravely ill and despondent, her more free-spirited sister, King’s Bessie, launches a suit against U.S. Radium for negligence, which she finds even killed her older sister Mary. This journey leads her to meet a cast of characters that, for however charming, do not impact the story or elevate it as much as Bessie and Josephine’s sisterhood.
Radium Girls Trailer #1 (2020) | Movieclips Indie
While the film can be a little slow and dug into its own desire to educate viewers, it thrives in the dynamic between Bessie and Josephine. These sisters are wildly different from each other, but their love and loyalty carry you through the, at times, sappier or random moments of the film. I am not always keen to when directors want to make me cry, particularly, because it is so easy to do so (lol!). Yet, the film does pull at heart strings because it shows the literal sisterhood of feminism, and how far you would go to get justice for your loved one, even if means facing off with a corrupt corporation that could destroy your life entirely. King’s Bessie reveals that once you lose the one you love, you feel so destroyed, you are almost reborn, which is why she fiercely faces a community willing to shun the deaths of young women to maintain a constant paycheck. After all, it was The Great Depression, and much like COVID, similar arguments were made over what would you rather: death by hunger or radium?
The Messed Up Truth About The Radium Girls
Watching Quinn play the “dimming” of Josephine is really powerful because she captures the emotional depression that follows your physical dilapidation, especially when it involves humiliation like, being misdiagnosed with syphilis to make you socially appear like a “slut.” When you feel weak in body, your soul can’t help but join in. Seeing how Quinn transforms Josephine from bright, hard-working, and determined to sick and sad nails unto audiences the cost of not having labor rights and unions in wealthy companies that do not care for workers, as seen with Amazon. The film does well to show how radium was marketed as a scientific miracle, even though there was growing knowledge to it potential fatality and outward campaigns to assure the Radium Girls did not get adequate, medical care. Seeing Josephine’s felt loss of herself, allows viewers to give some of their heart to a tale that truly is important, even if. Radium Girls comes out on October 23 on VOD.
