As others have intimated, "Ammonite" is rather an Anglicization of "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" (2019), and, sure, particularly given the sex of the filmmakers, a more male-centric variation, and, yes, it's not as good. The latter is such a masterpiece, though, that even its effigy, if you will, or fossilized remains--its replication of reproduction is telling. Once again, it's costume-drama lesbians on a rocky beach gazing at each other--one a hired professional respected in her field and the other's husband away. In the French film, this was all about art, including as if the entire picture was but another painting from the shared female gaze of the artist and the camera. Among other things, there was also the story-within-the-story of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth that reflected that gaze. Instead of painting, here, we get fossils. That doesn't have the same effect. Spectators may gawk at both in museums, but one is art and the other science. This is where "Ammonite" gets kind of clever.
As a fictionalization of the historical paleontologist, the Mary Anning here also draws and writes, but beyond the amusement of the prospect of Kate Winslet reversing her role in "Titanic" (1997), this only goes to the picture's business with hands and touch. I also don't care for the unromantic trope of falling in love with unconscious women. The tactile bit is apt for archeology and sex, though, but not necessarily much for the visual arts. Ditto a quite good soundscape--I like the sounds of the sea, handiwork and such here. Anyways, the ultimate counterpart here to the French film is the heightened music--and even that romance cliché of being in the rain--as the women attend what we're initially lead to believe is but a musical concert. More than that, though, it's an exhibition of the magic lantern. It's the most scientific of the visual arts: projected pictures--and, later, movies. Reminds me of some books on the history of motion pictures with titles of "Archaeology of the Cinema" (e.g. Those by C. W. Ceram and Laurent Mannoni). A good place to begin for that history is with the magic lantern, the beginning of projecting pictures, including motion pictures. Cinema wasn't just born in front of popcorn-chewing audiences or coin-slotted peephole boxes, and even then it was at first largely the work of at least wannabe-scientist inventors. But, no, cinema was invented by hard-science, not even the social sciences, polymaths: Christiaan Huygens, Michael Faraday, Joseph Plateau, Simon Stampfer, Charles Wheatstone, Jan Purkyne, Jules Janssen, Étienne-Jules Marey.
Point is, employing the magic lantern here was ingenuous. It was a scientific marvel to be gazed upon as much as were dinosaur bones. Note, too, how the entire scene is about looking, especially the scientist within the movie, who herself is gazing upon her love interest through another lens or screen, as it were, in the window. Quite the mise-en-abyme there. The rest of "Ammonite," besides the corresponding ending, I could take it or leave it, but this scene works. I'm less fond of the more vigorous sex scenes to its French counterpart, the seeming "head" pun of the fossil find leading to that term for sex, as well as the related allusion to castration-anxiety psychobabble of the male gaze at the end. Note the earlier male frontal nudity contrasted to the statue, as well as the prior male portraits. Oedipus instead of Eurydice. It takes one out of the illusion of sharing the intimate gaze between the two women (by two wonderful actresses, by the way, in Winslet and Saoirse Ronan) and places us back within the traditionally-dominant cinematic male gaze as though we're intruding. The magic is gone. Hard not to compare that to the sustained success of the gaze to the very end of "Portrait of a Lady on Fire."
As a fictionalization of the historical paleontologist, the Mary Anning here also draws and writes, but beyond the amusement of the prospect of Kate Winslet reversing her role in "Titanic" (1997), this only goes to the picture's business with hands and touch. I also don't care for the unromantic trope of falling in love with unconscious women. The tactile bit is apt for archeology and sex, though, but not necessarily much for the visual arts. Ditto a quite good soundscape--I like the sounds of the sea, handiwork and such here. Anyways, the ultimate counterpart here to the French film is the heightened music--and even that romance cliché of being in the rain--as the women attend what we're initially lead to believe is but a musical concert. More than that, though, it's an exhibition of the magic lantern. It's the most scientific of the visual arts: projected pictures--and, later, movies. Reminds me of some books on the history of motion pictures with titles of "Archaeology of the Cinema" (e.g. Those by C. W. Ceram and Laurent Mannoni). A good place to begin for that history is with the magic lantern, the beginning of projecting pictures, including motion pictures. Cinema wasn't just born in front of popcorn-chewing audiences or coin-slotted peephole boxes, and even then it was at first largely the work of at least wannabe-scientist inventors. But, no, cinema was invented by hard-science, not even the social sciences, polymaths: Christiaan Huygens, Michael Faraday, Joseph Plateau, Simon Stampfer, Charles Wheatstone, Jan Purkyne, Jules Janssen, Étienne-Jules Marey.
Point is, employing the magic lantern here was ingenuous. It was a scientific marvel to be gazed upon as much as were dinosaur bones. Note, too, how the entire scene is about looking, especially the scientist within the movie, who herself is gazing upon her love interest through another lens or screen, as it were, in the window. Quite the mise-en-abyme there. The rest of "Ammonite," besides the corresponding ending, I could take it or leave it, but this scene works. I'm less fond of the more vigorous sex scenes to its French counterpart, the seeming "head" pun of the fossil find leading to that term for sex, as well as the related allusion to castration-anxiety psychobabble of the male gaze at the end. Note the earlier male frontal nudity contrasted to the statue, as well as the prior male portraits. Oedipus instead of Eurydice. It takes one out of the illusion of sharing the intimate gaze between the two women (by two wonderful actresses, by the way, in Winslet and Saoirse Ronan) and places us back within the traditionally-dominant cinematic male gaze as though we're intruding. The magic is gone. Hard not to compare that to the sustained success of the gaze to the very end of "Portrait of a Lady on Fire."