Flintenweibe

Director and producer of this travesty, Francis Lee, apparently said that with this film he wanted to give Mary Anning "the relationship she deserved", to which I say; What did the poor woman ever do to you?

If anyone don't understand why this is a massive insult to Mary Anning and Charlotte Murchison, just imagine a film made about any famous historical man portrayed in this way. It'd be ridiculous to take say, George Cuvier or Charles Darwin and completely eject all their scientific endeavors from a film about them in favor of injecting a fictional and unrealistic gay love story into their lives, complete with an explicit sex scene that looks more like the work of a sweaty teenage boy than a respected filmmaker. The very notion would be deemed absurd if it was a male scientist, but with women it's apparently OK.

The real Mary Anning was a huge pioneer within paleontology, made even more remarkable by the fact that she was both a woman, and working class in a time where nearly all other scientists and their institutions were exclusive to men from the upper class. But the film doesn't really showcase any of it, all her amazing scientific work is shoved to the far background whilst the writer/director seems far more interested in speculating what Mary Anning's sex life was like.

Now, Francis Lee is a gay man himself, and I liked his previous film, God's own Country, which I thought handled the trials of gay men in a small town excellent, but what Francis Lee seems to have failed to realize is that in using famous historical women to tell a gender-swapped version of God's own country, instead of a progressive gay drama he plays into massively sexist notions that women's professional work doesn't matter and the most interesting about them is their sexual and romantic relationships, and the idea that women can't have platonic relationships worth telling stories about, they need to be sexual.

Not only does the film greatly reduce the work of Mary Anning, but Charlotte Murchison, in the film portrayed as a just a bored housewife that needs to have her depression cured by romance, was a competent geologist in her own right, but this is COMPLETELY ignored in this film. Also ignored was the fact that people couldn't just have casual lesbian relationships and kiss openly without fear of consequences in 1800s England, and treating it as such does all real lesbians who had to stay in the closet or be forced into loveless marriages for the sake of appearances a great disservice.

And it's not even a good romance between them, both main actresses look bored throughout and I literally saw more chemistry between the protagonist and a fossilized ichtyosaur than with her co-actor.

If you want a good lesbian historical drama, just watch Gentleman Jack instead, if you just want to see Kate Winslet topless, just watch Titanic instead, and if you want a good film about paleontologist Mary Anning... well, I can't think of a good film about that, but you certainly won't find it in Ammonite.

This is partially a story about the meaninglessness of war, and partially a story about star-crossed lovers, but the main theme recurring through both deals with the protagonist's inner conflicts as he winds up changing allegiances multiple times throughout, sometimes through choice, sometimes necessity.

Now, it really requires a lot of suspension of disbelief in the beginning of the story to buy that a German soldier and a woman in the resistance would be able to both sneak off from their duties and none of their fellow soldiers on either side noticing, but if you can look past this, this is a well-produced and well acted drama that manages well to depict the cruelty of war and tough choices without feeling gratuitous or cliched, though the ending is rather ambiguous and will leave you thinking.

It seems the creators of this adaption thought so little of their audience that they couldn't imagine they would want to watch a mystery set in a monastery without adding a bunch of female nudity and big battle scenes.

This series if full of unnecessary filler material, and all of it feels like it was tacked on by an edgy teenage boy, and it takes a particularly strong combination of woman-hating and homophobia to decide to add a bunch of gratuitous scenes of sexual assault and undressed women being tortured and killed just to show how evil the bad guys are, none of which was in the original story, but look at the homosexual relationships between monks, which was in the book and a big part of the characters motivations, and decide that those things don't need to be shown and just mentioned in passing, and carefully avoid showing the private parts of any male actors.

And that's not digging into the can of worms of portraying the main antagonist, the inquisitor, as mentally ill and his fanaticism as some sort of psychosis. Not only is it a gross cliche, but there are literal Disney villains who have managed to deal with themes of religion, misogyny and bigotry in a more subtle and nuanced manner.

Furthermore, the series is full of stupid mistakes, like the characters discussing a brown horse but the camera clearly showing a black horse, and in the final episode, the big narrative climax, was left filled with horrible green-screen effects just to mention the most egregious ones, but the series has plenty of plot holes and confusing flashbacks created by the added subplots not present in the book.

Lastly, while the supporting cast was decent with what material they were given, John Turturro was terrible as the main character. He's supposed to be a person so bright and colorful that the narrator follows him across all of Europe just because he's that interesting, but Turturro fades into the background of every scene he's in and is overshadowed by everyone else on the set, and that includes the previously mentioned horse.

There are only one saving grace to this series, there are some pretty shots of the landscapes and environments that are beautifully lit and atmospheric, but that alone cannot save a story ruined by terrible subplots and questionable decisions.