Rent Ammonite (2020)

Heart of stone - Ammonite review by TE

A lot has been said about the liberties taken with the historical record in the making of 'Ammonite'. Leaving that to one side, there are still some artistic problems with the film. The biggest one is the portrayal of Mary Anning as a sour, misanthropic outsider who doesn't even seem to have any passion for her fossil collecting, or any emotional bond with her mother. This makes Charlotte Murchison's attraction and then love for her completely incredible.

It's a pity that this central motor for the whole story is lacking, because the period detail is superbly presented and the Lyme Regis scenes, both interiors and exteriors, are excellent.

At times it feels as if too much has been left out in the editing process. The sexually explicit scenes between Mary and Charlotte are intensely passionate. Their enforced parting is packed with emotion. But then all of this is wilfully cast aside by Mary as soon as they reunite. The emphasis is squarely placed on Mary's supposed hardness ("ammonite") and not on the transgressive nature of the relationship in such oppressive times.

Tedious, pc, metoo, state-subsidised British arty flick which even manages to make dinosaurs boring - Ammonite review by PV

Well Jurassic Park, it ain't! It's not even The LAnd that Time Forgot or its sequel, or the woeful Jurassic Predator. (Or the wonderful The Dinosaur Project). It is more like Watching-Paint-Dry-o-saurus.

This film stinks of state subsidy - the usual, BFI, BBC, lottery and sure enough, the end credits revealed all 3 funded it, BINGO! This also boasts its DIVERSITY credentials - as so many tedious new state-funded films do and that is why so many are flops. Most metoo movies have flopped and lost money. Just TELL A STORY WELL and stop painfully trying to tick all the diversity boxes, and you may make a decent film now and then.

Only 2 male speaking roles in this film and both men are portrayed as idiots, nasty users, in contrast to the poor repressed women (the victims, you see, of nasty-wasty patriarchy). CAN YOU IMAGINE a film where the only 2 female characters were portrayed as monsters or morons? It is pure sexism and misandry. AND not the historical truth at all. It is ALL SO BORING. It does not work on any level.

But costume drama can work - see THE TUDORS. See The Madness of King George. See the great 1960s and 70s films on Cromwell etc.

This is pure feminist fantasy - there is NO EVIDENCE whatsoever that Mary Anning was in any way lesbian. None. I suspect the male writer and director tagged it on 1) to get state funding; 2) because he seems to like a pity party blaming men for all that is bad in the world; 3) the story of walking on a beach finding fossils is not cinematic - so a script needs a beginning, middle and end 3 act structure. SO what to do? Tack on some repressed 1840s lesbianism. I suspect Mary Anning would be appalled.

This veers into soft porn and if that is your thing, fine. But why not just watch 'Desert Hearts' and be done with it. ALL fabricated and false, and unnecessary too. There is a story here without that.

The facts are there: the Anning family found fossils to sell to tourists as extra income and THOMAS ANNING Mary's father started it. He gets forgotten AS DOES Mary';s older brother Joseph WHO FOUND THE Ichthyosaur fossilised skull, NOT Mary. He is forgotten and as a boy was forced to do an apprenticeship and give up fossil hunting/. "Their first well-known find was in 1811, when Mary Anning was 12; her brother Joseph dug up a 4-foot ichthyosaur skull, and a few months later Anning herself found the rest of the skeleton. " As with Pierre Curie, and many men, these men and boys and written out of history by the pc metoo feminist industry and woke historians.

They are the facts though. The fossil was found by JOSEPH ANNING., Not Mary. Natural History Museum take note. Mary found fossils by herself later on - plesiosaurus and pterosaur BUT they are not shown here. The ichthyosaur skull shown here was found by JOSEPH ANNING not Mary.

The social class issues are more interesting and much is made of the deaths of many of Mary's siblings BUT that was not unusual for this time at all - it was standard. And NO WAY were males more privileged than females - many men and boys were forced down mines, out to sea, into the army. Working class women did not have it easy but arguably the men had it harder. AND women should know that men did not have the vote either for most of history - and working class men got the vote just 30 years before women, 'White male privilege' my fanny A! Read some history.

The FACTS show Mary was actually quite well off financially in the 1810s and 20s and bought a house. She then did a bad investment and like many in Britain of the 1830s suffered poverty BUT then got a decent special pension from the British government after a campaign by scientists - she was hardly a victim then.

If this is the future of British film then I shall stop watching all ne British films.

On the plus side, I enjoyed the scenery of Lyme Regis. 1 star for that.

Period Romance Drama - Ammonite review by GI

This is part biopic about the famous Victorian palaeontologist Mary Anning and part period drama that adds a fictional romance between Mary and her friend Charlotte. The pairing of Kate Winslet as Mary and Saorise Ronan as Charlotte undeniably makes this a film well worth seeing. They are both superb here and bring a passion to this story written by director Francis Lee, who admits his poetic licence in making these two friends into lovers. Mary Anning is a renowned scientist who discovered many famous fossils but was spurned by the male dominated scientific community from which she was largely excluded. The film begins where Mary, her biggest discoveries behind her, lives with her placid mother (Gemma Jones) and runs a small shop in Lyme Regis selling small fossils and seashells. They live hand to mouth and so are unable to turn down the offer of payment from a fellow scientist to look after his depressed wife Charlotte. Curmudgeonly Mary shows Charlotte her passion in finding fossils on the windswept beach and gradually a passionate love affair blossoms between them. As a story of Victorian sexual attitudes this excels as it does as a love story about two women trapped within male dominated worlds. You could argue that the fossil discoveries depicted represent the finding of their passion as the two women excite over their shared passion of searching the beach and uncovering the past. Fiona Shaw supports here as a former friend/lover of Mary in an especially warm role that contrasts Mary's withdrawn emotions. This is a really delightful story, well told and well performed. Recommended.

Touching drama - but flawed - Ammonite review by HM

The life of Mary Anning was one of relentless toil scouring the coast of Dorset England for fossils. A drama about her would centre around her work, perhaps family background illustrating the death of siblings, her unlikely survival and then her emergence from the shadows as a major contributor to natural science. However, the writer and director Francis Lee chooses to make up a story about a lesbian relationship between her and another woman. This is entirely fictional. What is the point of this film? It is misleading about her life, character and distorts other relationships she had; not as far as is known sexual ones.

Lee has made another gay film, so he obviously likes the subject. Sadly the film lingers on close to pornographic bedroom scenes. The two woman 'go it it' in an urgent rush which takes the characters as painted leading up to this in a differnet direction of temperement and character. Gratuitous sex really.

Having said all that it is an enjoyable drama and rather touching: just not about Mary Anning.

Unsubtle and monotonous - Ammonite review by JR

If Kate Winslet is trying to regain credibility after embracing Hollywood and its values, she chose the wrong film. The film is unremittingly dark, the weather grim and windy every single day over the 2 or so months that the story covers. The metaphors are sledgehammer unsubtle - the moth fluttering in a jam jar - who could that be, I wonder?? Why do we see a close up of Mary squatting to urinate on the beach? Why do we see a full nude of Charlotte's husband? It is all very gratuitous and has little to say. With its disregard for the historical facts, it boils down to a lesbian soft porn flick dressed up in art house clothes .

Not enough fossils - Ammonite review by giantrolo

Super disappointed with this film. Mary Anning is one of my heroes, and I thought this film would be an awesome walk through her life and her fossil finding, but there were hardly any fossils, no science, and nothing really about how she grew up! It was basically just watching people pee on the beach followed by a lesbian romp fest. Could not recommend.

Ammonite - Ammonite review by Tim Megarry

This is a film about an imagined homosexual relationship and should be seen as such since it entirely misconstrues historical reality and ignores intellectual history. Mary Anning is a little known but highly important early palaeontologist who provided material that ultimately served to debunk age-old religious-based views of nature. In the hands of Darwin and Wallace Anning’s fossils were potent evidence for evolution by natural selection. Anning’s work showed conclusively that in another biological era – that we now call the Jurassic – there were flora and fauna that had entirely vanished from the Earth. She was thus to make a major contribution to an intellectual revolution that has reshaped our world since it refuted prevailing biblical fundamentalism which held that the Earth was a mere six thousand years old and that all of nature had appeared within days of “God's creation”.

Francis Lee’s fantasy film is based on the assumption that the lack of any proof of Anning’s heterosexuality must imply her homosexuality. But lack of evidence is not evidence of absence. Asexuality, or just plain celibacy, was the norm for the unmarried and all but universal for women before the twentieth century with a host of very painful sanctions for any transgression and yet Lee has ascribed Anning with the sexual repertoire of a porn star.

Yes, Ammonite is nice to look at and the characters are sympathetic, but the film says almost nothing about the state of nineteenth century science or Anning’s revolutionary contribution – as a female scientist – which has the effect of trivialising her role as a lone working-class woman. It is rather like making a film about Beethoven’s forlorn love-life and forgetting to mention his music.

Dr Tim Megarry