“If you place a Geiger Counter over the grave of a Radium girl, it will click for a thousand years.” This written quote is part of the film Radium Girls, the shocking, fascinating, and well-executed new feature, co-directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler, based on a true story no doubt very few people had heard of, just as I hadn’t.
So few stories like this one make it into the history books, and the heroic work of these young female factory employees, who unwittingly worked themselves to death from radium exposure but held the industry to account before passing, really needs to be told.
The storytelling never veers into Lifetime Movie territory, as it so easily could have given the subject matter. In fact, Radium Girls is consistently compelling, and often quite inventive.
