Movie Review: 'Ammonite'

Comedian Eddie Izzard has a brilliant bit in one of his many stand up specials about British movies. In the bit Izzard describes the charged drama but also the stiff upper lip, deeply coded and guarded approach to presenting that drama. It boils down to one person in a room and another entering the room and a series of awkward silences ensues while one character sorts matches. Switch matches for scraping mud off of rocks and you have a good description of the new drama Ammonite starring Kate Winslet and Saorise Ronan.

Ammonite stars Kate Winslet as real life archaeologist Mary Anning. Though she’s been responsible for some of the most astonishing discoveries in her field, Mary has not been rewarded for her hard work, brilliance and dedication. Instead of being feted at Universities and celebrated by patrons, Mary toils in obscurity in her seaside home of Lyme, locating incredible historic finds while supporting herself and her elderly mother by selling seashell crafts to tourists.

One day, as Mary is painstakingly toiling away on a new find, she is met by a wealthy archaeological tourist named Roderick Murchison (James McArdle). Mr Murchison, aware of Mary’s many discoveries and brilliant reputation has sought her out in order to accompany her on a search for new finds. Mary is reluctant but in need of money, she accepts. Traveling with Mr Murchison is his wife, Charlotte (Saorise Ronan), who says little but carries a heavy air of sadness.

Charlotte and Roderick have recently lost a baby at birth and Roderick hopes that travel and the sea air of Lyme will help to raise his wife’s spirits. When that doesn’t work right away, Roderick decides that the best cure for Charlotte is to leave her in Lyme and ask that Mary care for her while he’s away. Once again, Mary’s poverty overcomes her reservations. When Charlotte undergoes quack therapy to aid her depression, being locked in a box and dunked in a cold sea, she immediately falls ill.

Mary is then forced to take Charlotte into her home where she requires nursing almost non-stop until she begins to heal. It is then that the true plot of Ammonite kicks in. Charlotte, sensing the tenderness buried deep within Mary’s reserve, slowly begins to draw Mary out of her hard shell and the two begin an almost improbably passionate affair that culminates in scenes of explicit sexuality that you are likely not expecting from what was till then a staid and pensive bit of English drama.

Ammonite was written and directed by newcomer Francis Lee who takes remarkable liberties with the life of Mary Anning. Little is known about Mary’s personal life and all indications are that the homosexuality on display in Ammonite is an invention of the director entirely. This is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, making such assumptions and faking a story surrounding a real life historical figure is rather insidious on the part of a filmmaker. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with presenting someone as gay but to do so entirely as an invention is tricky at best and problematic at worst.

That said, there is something to be said for using homosexuality as a device to reveal something about a character. Being gay in the time in which Mary would be living is not an easy thing. The same goes for Charlotte who certainly ups the stakes on her own life, risking her marriage, her upper class status. and financial security in order to be with Mary. Ammonite is in desperate need of stakes and this forbidden love affair provides them.

That’s also, quite fairly described as a way of achieving cheap drama. It plays as if a storyteller wanted to tell the story of Mary Anning but found her life to be too tragically dull and needed a device to make it more interesting. Using gayness as a device is cheap and disrespectful to those who have actually had to deal with being marginalized just for being who they are. Being gay is not a device and when you add in the explicit sex scenes, Ammonite becomes even more uncomfortably exploitative of gayness.

In researching this article I have read that it was stars Kate Winslet and Saorise Ronan who choreographed the sex scenes and not the director. Their goal was to deliver a realistic depiction of lesbian sex and from what I am told, the film is… accurate. That said, because the director appears to be using gayness as a device rather than part of who these people really are, it renders the sex scenes not unlike a marketing device for a drama that desperately needed a hook.

Ammonite is in limited theatrical release at this writing and will be available for on demand services as of December 4th, 2020.

Trigger warning: if you have a problem with the sound of metal repeatedly scraping rock, do not see Ammonite. Much of the movie surrounds the quiet, awkward silences between all of the characters as Winslet’s Mary scrapes away at rock using a piece of metal. The sound design is akin to a metal hook employed by a dentist to scrape teeth. If you are sensitive to this sound, do not see Ammonite.