Ammonite

Ten Second Review: While its very well acted, it is a slow and mostly dull affair but that’s not the film’s biggest problem.

How do you review a biographical film that flauts the prospect for actual historical biography? Are we to take this film as pure fiction with real names attached as in the case of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter or Stoker’s Wilde which sees Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker’s actual friendship play out in a vampire hunting adventure (apparently historical figures hunting vampires is its own genre)?

The film centres on the real life pioneer and expert Mary Anning. Quietly famed for her work in finding and uncovering (mostly marine) fossils on the coastline near her home in Lyme Regis, Anning is credited with being the first person to find complete skeletons for several species of dinosaur.

The film’s narrative follows a tourist asking Anning to take his wife out fossil hunting to help with her melancholia. Anning, in need of money, agrees but resists her new guest. The pair form a strong bond and discover that might find what they’re missing in life in each other.

Mary Anning is a truly incredible woman with a phenomenal story. As a young lower class woman in the 1800s, the treatment she received from the scientific community and the exclusion and disrespect shown to her would certainly make for an incredible film and is a story that needs to be told. I remember as a kid going to the Natural History Museum with my school, having the guide explain who she was and what she discovered and us all wowing at her and the fossils now hanging on the museum’s walls. Her story is incredible enough to not need fabrication.

To hear director Francis Lee talk about it is a different matter all together. 

Given a historical figure where there is no evidence whatsoever of a heterosexual relationship, is it not permissible to view that person within another context? Would these newspaper writers have felt the need to whip up uninformed quotes from self-proclaimed experts if the character’s sexuality had been assumed to be heterosexual?

My question, and I admit it’s not a particularly wild or salacious one, is why does Mary Anning need a romantic story line at all? Is not her lack of romantic relationships throughout her life enough of a storyline in itself? I would also ask that if it is so important for her to have one, and the director intends to make it a lesbian relationship, would it not then be right to have that role played by a lesbian woman? I must admit that after writing this review I was glad to find one of Anning’s descendants asking the same question. Barbara Anning, speaking to the Telegraph, said;

I believe if Mary Anning was gay she should be portrayed as gay and this should also be by a gay actress. But do not believe there is any evidence to back up portraying her as a gay woman... I believe Mary Anning was abused because she was poor, uneducated and a woman. Is that not enough?

While not the view of all, I believe that film and cinema is a format for telling moving and revealing stories. I want to see more stories about women, people of colour, people from lower class backgrounds, people with disabilities and stories from the LGBTQ+ community, I want to see current and historical works, I want to see biographical and fictional works and I want to see those stories made by, told by and featuring those people and communities. 

Mary Anning’s life is underwritten and needs more visibility but Ammonite doesn’t do that. Instead it sacrifices her story in favour of an imagined biography designed to fill seats. If it seems thin that adding a lesbian relationship is done in bad faith and not simply added to view her life “within another context” as suggested by Lee, then why were so many changes made to Saoirse Ronan’s character (Anning’s love interest), Charlotte Murchinson. Murchinson was not a naive young girl, as portrayed in the film, but a geologist in her own right and 10 years Anning’s senior. Seemingly often in the shadow of her husband’s work in the field, Murchinson wanted access to higher education and in her persistence managed to open some of the lectures at London’s King’s College to women for the first time. Interesting then that she should be made younger, naive and lacking prospects as it rather silencers another interesting history.

Now if you ask me, a film starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan that captured the friendship and commradery of two women (one upper class and one lower class) both under appreciated their field, fighting for recognition by a scientific community that looks down on them is story that should be told. 

To be perfectly clear in regards to the film’s quality; Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan are individually incredible and an even more fantastic pairing. In a mostly dull, slow and badly paced film, the chemistry between them is truly enigmatic. In a different film I would be screaming for the quality they bring with their acting. It is such a shame that it is this film that sees them together.

To reiterate my earlier mentioned belief; I want to see more films by more silenced voices and I want to see those voices telling both historical and fictional stories. The sad truth of biographical story telling is that creative playing around with facts leaves open the door for others to do this in a negative fashion at a later date. In Ammonite it is done with positive intention but in turn it silences the true story of an incredible woman and leaves room for other story tellers to hide important narratives in the name of their own directorial decisions. There are two films here and they are both interesting; a film about Anning and Murchinson and a film about queer women in Victorian England. Tell the historical one historically and the fictional one fictionally and teach with both narratives in a far more convincing and genuine manner.