Skip to main content

Ammonite review – a chilly love among the fossils

Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan’s 19th-century romance showcases their talents but doesn’t warm the heart

This handsome second feature from the writer-director of 2017’s brilliant God’s Own Country is another hesitant love story set against the backdrop of a bracing British locale: the sea-battered Dorset coast around the famous Cobb of Lyme Regis harbour. It has been the setting for some overcooked screen moments in the past, although the emotional weather forecast here is frosty with occasional storms.

Kate Winslet is superbly flinty as Mary Anning, the 19th-century palaeontologist whose under-attributed finds have graced the display cases of the British Museum since her childhood. An early image sees a handwritten label for the historic “Sea Lizard, found by Miss Mary Anning” being tuttingly replaced by a floridly embellished sign reading “Ichthyosaurus, Lyme Regis, Presented by H Hoste Henley Esq”. It’s a concise way of illustrating both Anning’s outsider status (her role in the discovery is effectively usurped) and the snobbery of an establishment averse to inclusivity.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/31qj2FT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV
Post a Comment
Read more

When Brooklyn was queer: telling the story of the borough's LGBTQ past

In a new book, Hugh Ryan explores the untold history of queer life in Brooklyn from the 1850s forward, revealing some unlikely truths For five years Hugh Ryan has been hunting queer ghosts through the streets of Brooklyn, amid the racks of New York’s public libraries, among its court records and yellow newspaper clippings to build a picture of their lost world. The result is When Brooklyn Was Queer, a funny, tender and disturbing history of LGBTQ life that starts in an era, the 1850s, when those letters meant nothing and ends before the Stonewall riots started the modern era of gay politics. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H9Zexs
Post a Comment
Read more