The Dig
starring Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan, Lily James, Johnny Flynn, Ben Chaplin, Ken Stott, Archie Barnes and Monica Dolan
screenplay by Moira Buffini
directed by Simon Stone
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
Based on The Dig, an historical novel by John Preston (Viking, 2007), The Dig is based on real events surrounding the 1938 discovery of the Sutton Hoo Anglo Saxon burial treasure. To this day, the Sutton Hoo treasure is the greatest archaeological hoard of treasure goods ever discovered in the U.K. Furthermore, the discovery of the treasure in a burial mound on private property in East Anglia (modern day County Suffolk) changed the perception of the Anglo Saxon people as virtual barbarians to civilized people with culture, art and wealth, and it simultaneously changed the perception of the early Middle Ages from the Dark Ages to a time of real history and achievement. The periodic discovery of buried treasure - mostly Roman coins, but also some Anglo Saxon coins, jewelry and weapons, as well as Viking artefacts - accounts for metal detecting becoming a popular hobby in England. There are many hobby treasure hunters regularly crisscrossing the U.K. today with metal detectors looking for buried booty.
Excavation in the Sutton Hoo vicinity continues periodically until this day, with more being discovered. It turns out that the area was a ceremonial site for the Anglo Saxons, hosting a complex development of internment sites.
Ralph Fiennes plays Basil Brown, an experienced, self-taught archaeological excavator, although not a college-trained archaeologist. His lack of professional credentials doesn’t play well with the snobbish professional archaeologists from the British Museum who arrive after a burial ship is discovered, and try to snatch the project (and the credit) right out from under him. In my mind, I kept comparing Basil Brown to the fictitious Egyptian excavator, Sallah, Indiana Jones’ friend in the 1981 adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The Dig isn’t an adventure, though. Well, it certainly is in a sense, but not really. The story is rather slow-paced, and it’s very rural. The burial mounds in question are on private property in a country estate of an ailing woman, Edith Pretty, played by Carey Mulligan. The costumes and sets are very brown. The male actors favor brown tweeds. The interiors are brown wood-lined rooms with inadequate light. It seems very English to me. War with Nazi Germany is quickly approaching, and the Germans are industrial and high-tech, while the English in this story seem low-tech and slow - and very brown. Brown earth, brown clothes, brown houses. It’s kind of depressing, really. But it’s an excellent film.
There is more than one story line here, each one of which could be made into a movie by itself: Basil and Mrs. Pretty; Basil and the British Museum archaeologists; Basil and Mrs. Pretty’s young nephew; a gay romance among a couple of the junior archaeologists brought in to join the team; the romance of a young woman archaeologist and an RAF recruit also present at the dig. I’m beginning to wonder if pursuing more than one story line simultaneously in a film ostensibly about something else is an especially English thing. I’ve noticed it again and again in English films: The Battle of Britain (1969, directed by Guy Hamilton); A Bridge Too Far (1977, directed by Richard Attenborough); Love Actually (2003, directed by Richard Curtis), and many more. Just like how English speech is peppered with adjunct clauses that constantly try to divert a conversation off onto tangents in the mistaken belief that doing so helps a conversation by bringing more information to bear, I suspect that English movie-makers deliberately plant multiple story lines for the same reason. But I resent it. I resent excessive story lines, because they negatively impinge on the main story. It confuses things.