There are two scientific women in the 19th century who form a long friendship through their common interest in Geology and Palaeontology. One spends her life collecting fossil specimens in Lyme Regis and the other spends her life travelling with her husband to collect specimens and working with him in scientific pursuits - she was the original scientist between them and is instrumental in sparking scientific interest in him (and supporting his work) which ultimately leads to his knighthood in recognition of his scientific achievements.
What is exceptional about these women is that they both did serious scientific work at a time when it was considered an entirely male preserve, and that they faced lack of access to scientific forums and lack of credit for their achievements. This at a time when scientific discovery and engineering advancement was mushrooming to create huge excitement and transform thinking and attitudes in intellectual circles and wider society - to an extent that is hard to imagine today. What a pleasure it must have been for the two women to have been able to talk to each other and exchange ideas in this context.
Could Francis Lee get his head around this situation to make a great film out of it? Apparently NOT! That would have been too weird/difficult/boring??
Instead he chose to take the scientist completely out of one of the women to make her into something of a bored housewife type of character and then fabricate a lesbian relationship between them (incidentally cuckolding the husband, Sir Roderick Murchison, in the process and riding roughshod over the historical record of what seems to have been a long and happy marriage and professional partnership.)
Yes, make a film about a lesbian relationship in Victorian England, but do it with fictional characters, or characters where there is at least some basis for considering the relationship to have been lesbian. Or, if you're determined to ladle a speculative lesbian fiction onto the story of two real women, please don't completely deny the one's professional scientific character and capabilities in the process - or deny the mutual scientific interest that brought them together (in their own right, not via a bumptious husband as in the film.)
What is most upsetting about this film is the lost opportunity to explore something really interesting - the context for women in science at that exciting time and the possibility that, guess what, women can have friendships based on intellectual common interests, just like the chaps do. But that possibility seems to have been an imaginative stretch too far for Mr Lee who, despite a pseudo-feminist nod towards injustice from lack of recognition for Mary Anning's work, ultimately preferred to revert to a standard stereotypical and sexist view of the nature and capabilities of women in his treatment of Charlotte Murchison. As another reviewer notes - the film actually portrays less acknowledgement of the contributions to science of both characters, than scientific and general society did at that time. This seems beyond ironic in this post-#MeToo time.
On the positive side: the period and Mary Anning's day-to-day life were well recreated.
What is exceptional about these women is that they both did serious scientific work at a time when it was considered an entirely male preserve, and that they faced lack of access to scientific forums and lack of credit for their achievements. This at a time when scientific discovery and engineering advancement was mushrooming to create huge excitement and transform thinking and attitudes in intellectual circles and wider society - to an extent that is hard to imagine today. What a pleasure it must have been for the two women to have been able to talk to each other and exchange ideas in this context.
Could Francis Lee get his head around this situation to make a great film out of it? Apparently NOT! That would have been too weird/difficult/boring??
Instead he chose to take the scientist completely out of one of the women to make her into something of a bored housewife type of character and then fabricate a lesbian relationship between them (incidentally cuckolding the husband, Sir Roderick Murchison, in the process and riding roughshod over the historical record of what seems to have been a long and happy marriage and professional partnership.)
Yes, make a film about a lesbian relationship in Victorian England, but do it with fictional characters, or characters where there is at least some basis for considering the relationship to have been lesbian. Or, if you're determined to ladle a speculative lesbian fiction onto the story of two real women, please don't completely deny the one's professional scientific character and capabilities in the process - or deny the mutual scientific interest that brought them together (in their own right, not via a bumptious husband as in the film.)
What is most upsetting about this film is the lost opportunity to explore something really interesting - the context for women in science at that exciting time and the possibility that, guess what, women can have friendships based on intellectual common interests, just like the chaps do. But that possibility seems to have been an imaginative stretch too far for Mr Lee who, despite a pseudo-feminist nod towards injustice from lack of recognition for Mary Anning's work, ultimately preferred to revert to a standard stereotypical and sexist view of the nature and capabilities of women in his treatment of Charlotte Murchison. As another reviewer notes - the film actually portrays less acknowledgement of the contributions to science of both characters, than scientific and general society did at that time. This seems beyond ironic in this post-#MeToo time.
On the positive side: the period and Mary Anning's day-to-day life were well recreated.