Ammonite

There is nothing I love more than an atmospheric character-driven period drama and yesterday I got to see Ammonite which is a really good one!  Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) is a 19th century amateur paleontologist who spends her days roaming the Lyme coastline looking for fossils which she sells to tourists in a dingy little shop shared with her ailing mother (Gemma Jones).  She is cold, isolated, and a bit misanthropic, mostly because her discoveries are ignored by the establishment due to her gender and class.  She reluctantly agrees to teach Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), a wealthy member of the Royal Geographic Society, how to identify rocks containing ammonites (prehistoric mollusk-like sea creatures) because she needs the money.  His wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) is fragile and suffering from what he calls "mild melancholia" after a miscarriage so he decides that she is too weak to accompany him on an extended expedition and must stay behind in Lyme.  He asks Mary to be her companion while he is gone but neither woman is happy about this arrangement and their interactions are fraught with tension.  Mary, however, is increasingly drawn to Charlotte when the latter falls ill and Charlotte eventually responds to her care.  They begin a passionate, if desperate, affair knowing that Charlotte must soon return to her husband.  This will inevitably be compared to Portrait of a Lady on Fire but, while they both have a similar theme, they have very different tones.  I loved the symbolism of having the women break open a seemingly ordinary rock to discover the valuable fossil within.  Both women are dismissed by the people around them but they bring each other to life by recognizing what is extraordinary in the other.  I also loved the washed-out monochromatic color palette of blues and grays that gradually becomes more saturated as their affair continues, especially in relation to the sea.  Whenever Mary is on the beach alone, the sky is gray and the water is very turbulent but, when Mary and Charlotte swim in the sea together, the water is welcoming and the sun gives their skin a luminous glow.  The images on the screen are incredibly beautiful but the performances of both Winslet and Ronan are brilliant!  Both of them are able to convey so many emotions with just their body language and facial expressions rather than through dialogue (the sound design is eerily silent through much of the duration), especially in a scene where the women attend a music recital.  The final scene between them, standing on either side of a glass case filled with fossils at the British Museum, is devastating because of the way they look at each other.  Some might say the ending is ambiguous but I found the symbolism to be quite thought-provoking and it gave me goosebumps!  I suspect that both actresses will be receiving multiple nominations during awards season.  It is definitely a slow burn but I highly recommend it!