Murchison, who treats Charlotte rudely, then asks Anning to be his wife’s companion while he continues on a four-, five- or perhaps six-week sojourn. He pays her to take him and his wife, who is ailing from what might be a recent miscarriage, on a salutary, specimen-seeking hike on the rocky strand. Murchison lays the flattery on rather thickly, praising “the presiding deity of Lyme.” Anning’s cold shoulder should freeze him in his tracks. They are the real life Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), a Scottish geologist, and his young wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan). One day her gloomy shop is invaded by a well-to-do man and his wife. One of her finds, a complete ichthyosaur, is in the British Museum. Anning is unmarried, without children and well-known among male-dominated scientific circles for her specimens and drawings. Both films have much to admire artistically both left me just a little cold.Anning and her unwell mother, Molly (Gemma Jones), live together behind their seaside shop in which Anning sells “curios” that are in fact fossil specimens of prehistoric sea creatures she finds on her daily expeditions to the beach, where the cliffs and the water give up their long dead inhabitants. At times, I was reminded of the austere atmosphere of Michael Winterbottom’s Jude, another critical triumph for Winslet. It adds up to an expertly crafted film that nonetheless feels somewhat distanced and removed, like an exhibit under glass. Stéphane Fontaine’s crisp cinematography perfectly captures the bleak chilliness of the environment, while Dustin O’Halloran and Volker Bertelmann’s sparingly used score is as notable for the gaping voids in which it doesn’t appear as for those carefully chosen moments when it does. Wisely, Lee lets these events speak for themselves, rather than hammering home any sociopolitical message through needless expository dialogue. While Ralph Fiennes’s archaeologist Basil Brown was snubbed in The Dig for being largely self-taught, Winslet’s Anning faces the double whammy of being both an autodidact and a woman. It’s no accident that Ammonite opens with a woman industriously polishing a floor, only to recoil in head-bowed subservience as “gentlemen” march by. It’s a powerful point, eloquently made, although, in the end, issues of class and gender, rather than sexual orientation, seem more central to Lee’s film. In response, Lee has stated: “After seeing queer history be routinely ‘straightened’ throughout culture, and 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?” The real-life Murchison was an accomplished geologist and illustrator who became close to Anning, although Lee’s decision to portray them as lovers has inevitably ruffled some feathers. Gradually, the pair’s growing friendship gives way to passion – strangely desperate couplings amid the stark silences of the house. Soon, Charlotte’s fine clothes are becoming muddied and torn on the rocks. Mary is not keen, but payment is promised and arrangements made. Perhaps the invigorating air and the chance to observe Anning at work will restore the once-vibrant spirit that has withered in his company. Things change when Mary meets Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan, excellent), a young woman in the throes of a debilitating depression whose husband wants her to stay with Anning, albeit temporarily. Watching this, I longed for a shawl to wrap snuggly around my shoulders. Her mother, Molly (the redoubtable Gemma Jones), is equally insular theirs is not a household filled with warmth and laughter. Like Daniel Plainview in the opening movement of There Will Be Blood, Winslet’s heroine is a figure of few words and imposing stature, driven by an internal engine that seems to require no human contact. Anning runs a shop selling “Fossils and Curios”, which she gathers from the rugged coastline, striding purposefully over rocks and foam.
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