Saoirse Ronan spins her wheel of accents and what does it land on today? English! Very nice. Ronan is very talented across the board and loves to mix it up. Equally, Kate Winslet is looking for her next project where she can flop a tit out in (that’s not much of an exaggeration; I’ve seen Winslet nude in Titanic, The Reader and Little Children, just off the top of my head and I’m grateful for it); what movie better promises nudity than a lesbian-awakening. I don’t mean to be crude, but I laugh to myself thinking that whilst some people joke that porn sucks without a story, a movie like this is all story, the sapiosexual story before the sex. Having said that, the most explicit sex scene I have ever seen comes in this movie. I thought Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams were hot in Disobedience (an extremely great movie that didn’t get enough attention by the way), but Winslet and Ronan can look those two ladies in the eye and say ‘read it and weep.’ And before you move to label my attitude degrading, as a heterosexual male I do enjoy sexy women being sexy, and as a film enthusiast, I have done my time on the other side; Call Me by Your Name is my second favourite movie of the last five years. In any case, let me put myself back into my pants as we discuss the finer points of Ammonite.
Gruff Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), talented but reclusive palaeontologist, trawls the beach for fossilised material to pass on to collectors, and only keeps her elderly mother for company. When enthusiastic scientist Roderick Murchison (James McArdle) comes to visit, he strikes a deal to follow Anning in her routine, and learn what he can of her expertise. Roderick’s wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) has grown melancholy since their marriage, and Roderick further wonders whether Anning can house her for a few weeks, to give her a doctor-recommended sea-change, away from their London home. At first, the two women butt heads, but when their defences start to melt away, they form an unexpected kinship.
Ammonite is a quiet movie. It’s one of those movies where you know exactly where it’s going to go within the first five minutes; only the quality of the detours the plot may take are yet to be discovered. I love how the movie uses silence to communicate the mundane and familiarity of life for our characters, as a comment on either Anning’s small coastal community and solitary lifestyle, or on more proper times when most things were not discussed, especially a longing for same-sex companionship. For that fact though, Ammonite might seem slow to some, and if you’re not in a willing mood to tiptoe through scenes with these ladies, then you might get bored. I’m also a sucker for movies where the actors have to show they’ve learnt specific skills; Winslet must make ink, and cut cubed potato in her hands with a knife without looking – maybe I’m not spending enough time in the kitchen, but I’d be peeling those spuds with a peeler and cutting them on a chopping board, and not neglecting my hand-eye coordination. Mary has rough hands, working on digging stones out of the muddy beach, and constantly working away cleaning them. Kate Winslet is the star of the show, and as Charlotte says that Mary was the most beautiful person at the concert in one scene, Mary is certainly the most intriguing character of the movie. Anning gets to smile once, before the moment is ruined by her mother screeching for assistance.
I’m happy to see Fiona Shaw finally play in a role where she isn’t a bitch; after years of keeping Harry Potter under the stairs, and then snapping at Enola Holmes last year, I don’t think I’ve ever known a character she’s played to have a gentle bone in her body until now. Believe it or not, there was also a time when I didn’t find Saoirse Ronan particularly attractive at all; it was the Ed Sheeran music video for ‘Galloway Girl’ that turned me around – Ronan at her dreamy best. Here, she is beautiful; at one point wearing a green dress that makes her look the epitome of Anna from Frozen – too early for a live-action adaptation, Disney? Anyway, there are moments where I wondered if I was getting a full enough sense of Ronan’s character, but I conclude that Anning is the study, and Charlotte is reserved until needed. After bolder roles in Little Women, Mary Queen of Scots, and Ladybird, this character requires Ronan to be more subdued; uncertainly immature I’d say, akin to Eliza Scanlen in Babyteeth. It’s a departure from what we’re used to seeing with Ronan’s more outwardly complex performances.
I went into Ammonite wanting two heavyweights of the acting world working off each other to elevate their brilliance, but this really isn’t that sort of movie; where instead performances are controlled, and the task is to convey subtle body-language above all else. There’re no indulgent scenery-chewing scenes, like between Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in The Post, for example. Ammonite also made me revisit the relationship between the trailer and movie again – going into this movie, I knew this was going to be a love affair, but if you went in cold-turkey, I’m not sure it’s obvious what the movie is building towards in the first half; when Mary leaves the music recital for instance, what is her deal? Is she acting crazy, or is it obvious jealousy? To get the most out of my viewing, I’m glad I had context.
The movie takes some liberties – a little exploration tells me that although Charlotte Murchison and Mary Anning did meet, Murchison was already a geologist in her own right by then. There’s no evidence that they were ever romantically involved, but Anning did live her life alone, and since there’s no documentation of her sexuality either way, I suppose there’s room for a fictional secret romance. I’m glad to have learnt the name of palaeontologist Mary Anning in some capacity at least, the origin of the tongue-twister ‘she sells seashells by the sea shore’ as some speculate, and a remarkably influential female figure of science in her own right. As a movie, I think it is the commitment to the presentation and level of intrinsic detail that make Ammonite work for me – all the way down to the ammonite-shaped hat sported by Mary, as she later visits Charlotte in London. The symbolism was not lost on me, movie; like an ammonite, discovered and released from its stony prison, Charlotte has unleashed Mary. Instead of the Johansson’s Ghost in the Shell, Mary is the Shell in the Rock – if Honest Trailers ever want to make an episode out of Ammonite, feel free to use that.
4.5
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