Review:
"Ammonite"
Release Date: Nov. 13, 2020
Rating: R Running Time: 120 minutes Frances Lee follows up his directorial debut God’s Own Country with Ammonite, a companion gay love story told with the same capacity for compassion and an acute interest in the smaller details. Both films, about unlikely romantic pairings between dissimilar strangers, also share a similar narrative arc and thematic concerns. Whereas the contemporary God’s Own Country focused on the relationship between two men, a Yorkshire farmer and a Romanian immigrant, Ammonite chronicles the forbidden love affair about two women in 1840s England. At the center of Ammoniteis the pioneer English palaeontologist Mary Anning, who hunted for fossils in the Southwest England seaside town of Lyme Regis. There is no historical evidence that Anning was a gay, so Ammonite is less a biography than a period romance built on speculation. Which works for Ammonite as it employs Anning’s background and accomplishments as a means to explore what it meant to be a gay woman in 19th-century England. More often curt and to the point than not, Kate Winslet presents Anning as an emotionally impenetrable caregiving to her ailing mother with seemingly little time or interest in matters that all outside of her personal life and professional endeavors. Mary’s gloomy existence of finding and selling museum-quality fossils is shattered with the arrival of Saoirse Ronan’s Charlotte Murchison, the dutiful wife to a rich bore (James McArdle). Mary is paid by the controlling husband to befriend Charlotte while she convalesces in Mary’s seaside home. During the weeks they spend together, Mary and Charlotte fall for each other. Director Frances Lee allows their love affair to unfold slowly and gently through glances and mostly coded exchanges. Lee envelopes the quiet proceedings with a rare intimacy that allows for Mary and Charlotte to tap into and act upon the strong feelings they share. Their deepening bond is never more evident than when Charlotte helps dislodge a large fossil buried on the muddy beach. Nothing feels forced in Ammonite, especially during Mary and Charlotte make love. Lee finds sensuality in their love scenes by remaining as authentic as possible in the acts they perform. And this plays into Lee’s naturalistic approach to Ammonite, which is carried over from God’s Own Country. He presents life as it is in all its unvarnished glory. He also displays the same keen sense of place he did with God’s Own Country, with the bleak English seaside serving as a stark contrast to the joy that Mary and Charlotte experience as result of finding each other. While Winslet maintains her stoic façade Ammonite, she allows occasional glimpses of the internal joy Mary enjoys because of Charlotte. Of course, making Mary as hard as the fossils she treasures is a bit on the nose, but it proves effective within the context of her romantic awakening. Ronan never shies away from imparting Charlotte’s feelings—she appears positively suffocated by her husband and embraces the liberation she tastes with Mary. While Mary’s past history with women is made clear in Ammonite, Lee shows no interest in labelling Charlotte. It is enough to know that Charlotte is trapped in a loveless marriage to an aloof snob who expects his wife to know her place. Still, Charlotte’s interactions with her husband informs how she navigates her the early stages of her relationship with Mary, for better and for worse. “I want this to be different. Our different,” Charlotte tells Mary when they discuss what is and what can be. If there is fault to be found in Ammonite, it is that it exists within a vacuum. Society, polite or otherwise, never intrudes upon Mary and Charlotte’s love for each other. So we are required to operate on the assumption that their relationship is not only different but certainly taboo. Or at least it is not to be mentioned in conversation. This does not take anything away from the depth to which Lee explores Mary and Charlotte’s relationship. But to not know how the real world treats Mary and Charlotte is to not know whether their relationship can stand the test of time as well as the relics Mary unearths and are displayed to all in museums. Robert Sims Aired: Nov. 12, 2020 Web sites: https://ammonite-movie.com/ https://www.facebook.com/ammonitefilm/ |
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