Ammonite

Ammonite is not a love sto­ry. And yet it has all the trap­pings of one: roman­tic beach strolls; long­ing looks; fever­ish spon­ta­neous sex; and a qui­et atmos­phere that real­ly allows you to get to know the char­ac­ters through their facial expressions.

This is per­haps why the film was imme­di­ate­ly com­pared to the crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed French film Por­trait of a Lady on Fire. But unlike that film, Ammonite is not a tale of great love. The film, writ­ten and direct­ed by Fran­cis Lee, tells the sto­ry of real-life pale­on­tol­o­gist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) who came to promi­nence in the ear­ly 1800s for her pre­his­toric find­ings. Anning was a sci­en­tif­ic pio­neer, with intel­li­gence much more advanced than her male peers at the time.

Her qui­et life, work­ing and liv­ing with her moth­er (Gem­ma Jones), is sud­den­ly dis­rupt­ed by the arrival of geol­o­gist Rod­er­ick Murchi­son (James McAr­dle) and his trou­bled young wife Char­lotte (Saoirse Ronan). What begins as a sim­ple appren­tice­ship quick­ly morphs into some­thing more com­plex when Rod­er­ick abrupt­ly departs and leaves Char­lotte behind. While Mary is ini­tial­ly resis­tant to Char­lotte, their rela­tion­ship even­tu­al­ly becomes sex­u­al and they begin an affair.

Their bond is built on mutu­al lone­li­ness. Mary’s work and liv­ing sit­u­a­tion keep her far from oth­ers while Charlotte’s gen­er­al air of melan­choly and an inat­ten­tive hus­band leaves her frus­trat­ed and iso­lat­ed. Togeth­er, they are a mis­matched cou­ple, whose emo­tion­al align­ment is height­ened by the gulf of expe­ri­ence and emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty between the two.

Winslet plays Mary with all the seri­ous­ness and pre­ci­sion of a no-non­sense pro­fes­sion­al. She rarely smiles dur­ing the film, keep­ing her brows down and her eyes focused on the sea­side where she pro­cures her arti­facts. She has lit­tle care for her phys­i­cal appear­ance or being tra­di­tion­al­ly lady­like. This is illus­trat­ed by a scene where she casu­al­ly uri­nates on the beach near the rocks before quick­ly return­ing to her work.

Ronan takes on the more tra­di­tion­al­ly fem­i­nine role, with all the ador­ing looks and roman­tic over­tures that come with it. But Mary’s first love is her work, and even­tu­al­ly, that cre­ates a wedge between the two. There are hints that Mary’s emo­tion­al cold­ness is due in part to a failed rela­tion­ship with an old­er woman (Fiona Shaw), but the film does not delve deeply into that part of the story.

Lee, best-known for his debut fea­ture God’s Own Coun­try, is not inter­est­ed in romance in the tra­di­tion­al sense. This film focus­es more on the atmos­pher­ic parts of real-life: clean­ing; putting on and remov­ing clothes; the crash of the waves onto the shore; eat­ing meals; and the long silences between speech. Ammonite empha­sis­es the sounds of life: the drag­ging of feet and fab­ric across the floor; the tight­en­ing laces of a corset; the clank of sil­ver­ware dur­ing meals.

These small things seem to pro­vide the most com­fort to Mary, more than pas­sion or sex. In Ammonite, Lee shows us the world from Mary’s point of view. Char­lotte is the dis­turb­ing force in her qui­et life, push­ing her to choose between her inde­pen­dence and her work. But from the first moments of the film, it’s clear what she will choose.