Ammonite

A Yorkshire Fossil Festival post

Portrait of Mary Anning with her dog Tray and the Golden Cap outcrop in the background, Natural History Museum, London.

 

At this year’s Yorkshire Fossil Festival in Scarborough, we organized a FossilFilmFest with the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Ammonite would be the Saturday night star turn, and as Festival director I agreed to host a post-screening Q&A.

The notes I’d made before the film weren’t very comprehensive:

MA (1799-1847)

            Lightning strike, 15 months

            Father & brother – curios

            An expert fossilist

                        Buckland, Sedgwick, Murchison

            ‘her benevolence of heart and integrity of life’ (?Dickens)

CM (1788-1869)

            Geological interests

            Persuaded gun-toting husband to pursue rocks and fossils more than prey

Winslet (b. 1975), Ronan (b. 1994)

Trowelblazers

Mary Anning Rocks

            Evie, 11 years old

            Statue next year (May ’22)

Francis Lee

            “I didn’t want to write a biopic. I wanted to imagine a Mary, my Mary, if you like.”

 

The notes I made during the film weren’t very coherent:

A Yorkshire Fossil Film

The Film versus ‘The Truth’

Belemnite ink

“Yes, Mr Murchison, shit.”

When is it set?

Charlotte Murchison’s defence of commercial palaeontology

Why isn't there a Yorkshire Mary Anning?

 

Yorkshire FossilFilmFest 2021

As a consequence, when I stepped onto the stage after the film, I wasn’t quite sure what I’d say to the audience. My guest had been unable to attend, and I’m not especially knowledgeable about Mary Anning, or women in 19^th Century science. I’m certainly no film critic.

 

What I didn’t expect, however, was that – a few minutes in – I’d find myself so overcome with emotion that I was unable to speak. The portrait of Mary with her dog Tray (above) was up on the screen behind me, and I’d mentioned how Tray was killed in a landslide that could easily have killed Mary, and how both would feature in the statue that will be unveiled in Lyme Regis next spring, on Mary’s 223^rd birthday, and how it had required a campaign by an 11-year-old girl for this recognition to finally, belatedly, deservedly happen, and suddenly my words had gone, and been replaced by tears.

 

Perhaps I’ll write a review of Ammonite in due course, but I need to collect my thoughts first.