![]() ![]() She was a working-class woman born into a life of poverty, in a totally patriarchal, class-ridden society. ![]() And her life story instantly struck a chord with me. Mary Anning’s name kept coming up, and so I read about her. I was looking for a polished stone or a fossil for a loved one, as a gift, and I was Googling this. I was actually on the promotional tour for “God’s Own Country,” and I was pretty lonely and a bit sad on my own. When did you first know you wanted “Ammonite” to be your next project? They’re both such gentle, tender stories, and very much about tenderness as this almost radical action for characters valued primarily for their physical labor. It really does feel like we have to discuss one to discuss the other. I loved “Ammonite” and “God’s Own Country,” and I’m excited to talk to you about them both. Speaking by phone, the writer/director discussed reaching back through history for "Ammonite," following his heart after “God’s Own Country,” and why toughness and tenderness make for such unexpectedly fitting bedfellows. (While no evidence exists that Anning and Murchison were lovers, Lee points out Anning never had a heterosexual relationship, despite enjoying multiple close and long-lasting friendships with women, and that in her era Anning would have been precluded from documenting any same-sex attraction.)īut taken together, Lee’s films are fascinating in how they consider the relationship between love and labor, exploring the effect of each on body and soul while suggesting intimate connection as one respite available to those who draw only cold comfort from their hard-scrabble vocations. And whereas “God’s Own Country” told of a gay relationship between a British sheep farmer and a Romanian migrant worker, both fictional characters, “Ammonite” excavates an imagined lesbian romance from real history. “God’s Own Country” takes place in the present day and was shot down the road from the West Yorkshire farm where Lee grew up “Ammonite” recreates 1840s Dorset, which required Lee to shoot both out of time and off his native moorland. Some key differences exist between Lee’s films. Set on England’s south coast in the early 19th century, it follows real-life paleontologist Mary Anning ( Kate Winslet), whose solitary life hunting fossils along the shoreline is disrupted by the arrival of Charlotte Murchison ( Saoirse Ronan), a young married woman sent to convalesce by the sea. 4), Lee continues to explore intimacy as raw human heat, charting the kinds of romantic bonds unexpected and passionate enough to thaw his characters from their gelid, workaday existences. In “ Ammonite” (hitting select theaters Friday, followed by a premium-on-demand rollout Dec. ![]()
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