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Ammonite ending3/24/2023 Through her own ingenuity and courage and damn hard work, she rose to being who we would now call one of the leading paleontologists of her generation. Here was this woman born into a life of poverty, working class, in this totally patriarchal, class-ridden society. Seventh Row (7R): What made you feel like a romance was the best avenue through which to explore Mary Anning’s life?įrancis Lee: I was so instantly struck with Mary, not just her accomplishments but her circumstances. I spoke with Francis Lee over Zoom about what attracted him to Mary Anning, filling in what history books left out, and how sound design was absolutely crucial to creating Mary’s world. “There’s hardly anything written about Mary Anning when she was alive,” Lee told me, which meant he had to fill in the blanks of history by inventing parts of Mary’s story, including her relationship with Charlotte. Lee has one eye on the romance and one eye on the lost history it represents - of historically ignored lesbian relationships, and of Mary Anning herself, who was a pioneer in her field but was never appreciated in her time. While God’s Own Country was a lovely but straightforward love story, Ammonite is an altogether more ambitious effort. When Charlotte returns to her home of elaborate dresses, fancy homes, and servants in London, the context of their relationship changes completely. Charlotte’s time in Lyme, as a visitor in Mary’s small and bare home, is a bubble in which the barriers of class are less pronounced. Unlike the eventually serendipitous relationship between Johnny and Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) in God’s Own Country, the dynamic between Mary and Charlotte is more complicated because it’s fraught with class tension. The outsider in Ammonite is Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan), an upper class woman from London whose husband has left her in Lyme Regis to “take the sea air” in order to recover from “melancholia” after losing a child. ![]() These similarities only serve to underscore how much of a step up Ammonite is from God’s Own Country: it’s an expansion in scale, scope, and ideas. As with Johnny (Josh O’Connor) in God’s Own Country, Mary is a withdrawn, lonely soul and just like Johnny, the love of a more extroverted outsider pushes Mary out of her shell. Ammonite is a fictionalised account of real life 19th-century paleontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), a working class woman who lived on the cold, windy coast of Lyme Regis, Dorset and worked with her hands, in the mud, excavating fossils. At Seventh Row, we pride ourselves on seeking out the best hidden gems that nobody’s talking about to ensure that our readers never miss a great film again.Ĭlick here to sign up for regular streaming recommendations of the best under-the-radar films.įrancis Lee’s second feature, Ammonite, is an apt companion piece with his debut, God’s Own Country. Francis Lee on Ammonite and the voiceless women of history. Check out our ebook about Lee’s God’s Own Country here. Read (and listen to) more about Francis Lee’s Ammonite here. Francis Lee discusses excavating the life of paleontologist Mary Anning in Ammonite, and how he used sound design to immerse us in her world.
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