Ammonite (2020)

Film: Ammonite (2020)

Stars: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Fiona Shaw, Gemma Jones, James McArdle, Alec Secareanu

Director: Francis Lee

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Three years after the fact, I still am haunted by the majesty of God's Own Country.  I saw the film in theaters with few expectations-it had two cute guys, likely making out, which generally was enough for me in 2017-but it was a brilliant piece of filmmaking.  I ended up citing all four leads for nominations at my personal awards that year, and put it on my list of the Best Pictures of the year.  It was dwarfed in most discussions by some of the other queer cinema of the year (specifically Call Me By Your Name), but Francis Lee's work is delicate & wonderful, particularly in the film's final, aching moments.  As a result, I was eager to see Ammonite not just because of my love of the leading ladies (both favorites), but more so because I wanted to see what Francis Lee does with another gay love story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is based at least on real people, though it's not clear how much of these real people's lives are accurately depicted here.  Mary Anning (Winslet) is a paleontologist who lives in Southern England, collecting fossils along the seashore to sell to tourists.  As we discover from an incident with Roderick Murchison (McArdle), Mary was once a great discoverer of fossils, and at age 11 found a fossil that is now in the British Museum.  Roderick asks Mary to watch his wife Charlotte (Ronan), who is suffering from depression after the death of her child (it's not clear if the child died in infancy or childbirth), but she must stay as he goes on an expedition.  Mary nurses Charlotte back to health, and they start a love affair (despite it being the 1840's), one that poses a ticking clock challenge as eventually Charlotte must return to her husband.

I'm going to end the recap there because it's kind of where the writers do.  Ammonite is glacially-paced (which is not usually a problem for me-if there's a criticism I can look beyond it's a movie being too meditative).  However, it also doesn't know what to do with Ronan's Charlotte, and neither does the actress, and this is a problem because much of the film's final third rests with Charlotte.  Charlotte seems intent on the two spending their lives together, but in doing so reveals that she doesn't understand Mary at all.  Mary is a woman whose work comes first, and who must have her independence, and Charlotte offers her a gilded cage.  This would have been a good, if melancholy, ending, but it actually ends with Mary going to the British Museum to see her discovery, and Charlotte is there, smiling.  That's the ending-no hint as to what comes next, and because we don't really know Charlotte (and she doesn't understand Mary) we can't infer anything (this isn't Carol).

That being said, Winslet is so good you might not care.  Winslet, an actress of great verve, whose earth goddess routine doesn't feel well-suited for a sullen, bitter woman who clearly loves deeply, but not in ways that can make her connect to others.  Yet here she is, bringing decades of pain, dismissal, and hope to the role.  There are no big moments where she lashes out, the actress never takes the easy way with her character & a tear-stained breakdown, but it's all there.  The boredom with her life, the way that she adapts to routine, the genuine pleasure she gets from the work, and the possibility of Charlotte-it's all there in Winslet's mannerisms, voice, & eyes.  I'm someone who has been subscribing a lot to late-career Winslet (I adored her work in Steve Jobs and thought she was even better in Wonder Wheel, giving Woody Allen perhaps his final great performance), so I'm not surprised or laying on "best in decades" praise here (Wonder Wheel remains her best work since Eternal Sunshine), but she continues to be one of our finest working actresses, and this is another master class from an (under-appreciated?) actress.