Ralph Fiennes in ‘The Dig’
A lovely movie about a shining thread of humanity binding the past, present and future, this drama is worth every moment you spend with it
Ralph Feinnes in a World War II drama? You had me at Ralph Feinnes, never mind his nose-less avatar as the Dark Lord or his stuffy three-piece suit version of M. His haunted eyes as Count Laszlo de Almásy in
The English Patient (1996), talking of the hollow of Katherine’s (Kristin Scott Thomas) neck, are seared into our consciousness.
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In 1938, excavator Basil Brown broke ground at the Sutton Hoo estate in Suffolk, England, investigating a series of mounds on the property of landowner Edith Pretty. There, he makes an overwhelming discovery: the mounds mark the burial site of an Anglo-Saxon king.Â
Director Simon Stone brings the narrative to life in âThe Dig,â a recent Netflix film based on both the historical incident and John Prestonâs novel of the same name. For a production about a significant discovery, it handles themes of exploration and the importance of history lightly, leaving everything at face value when thereâs clearly more to say.Â
If you were to make a list of childhood dream careers, archeologist would no doubt rank highly, alongside astronaut and star athlete. And it’s easy to see why: nothing is more thrilling than the promise of discovery, the idea that the next great buried treasure could be a shovelful of dirt away. It’s a sentiment that’s made films like the Indiana Jones series both iconic and irresistible. But there is also a sad beauty to archeology, which offers us a window into our past while reminding us of our fleeting mortality. We can’t help but wonder what future archeologists will find of us, what stories they will imagine based on the things that outlast our existence.
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Netflix presents a film directed by Simon Stone and written by Moira Buffini, based on the novel by John Preston. Rated PG-13 (for brief sensuality and partial nudity). Running time: 112 minutes. Opens Friday at Landmark Century Centre and on Netflix. Based on a 2007 novel by John Preston that was inspired by the incredible true story of one of the most significant British archaeological finds ever, “The Dig” maintains a dignified and restrained approach, even when the material gets a little salacious in the form of not one but two “forbidden” romances. Melodramatic relationship developments aside, this is primarily about the well-off widow Edith Pretty (Mulligan) and the skilled but relatively unschooled excavator and amateur archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), who in 1939 is hired by Edith to poke around the mounds of earth on the property of her house at Sutton Hoo. (Stories had been circulating for years about potential treasure buried beneath the land.)
If you’ve ever pined for ‘Time Team: The Movie’,
The Dig is for you. Adapted from John Preston’s novel, Simon Stone’s film details one of Britain’s most notorious archaeological digs, the discovery in 1938 of an Anglo-Saxon ship in the burial mounds at the delightfully named Sutton Hoo estate in Suffolk. As anyone who’s followed Tony Robinson presiding over a three-day exploration of a Roman villa in the rain might guess,
The Dig has to work hard to conjure up genuine dramas out of the minutiae of archaeology (this is no search for the Ark Of The Covenant), never really raising the pulse rate, but it gets by on strong performances, some gorgeous filmmaking and the always winning idea of good people coming together to do good things.
Ralph Fiennes’s Sutton Hoo drama, The Dig, is a beautiful, heartfelt period tale
4/5
Fiennes, Carey Mulligan and a roguish Johnny Flynn bring this Thirties-set tale of intellectual and romantic passion to life
Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes in Netflix's heartfelt drama, The Dig
Credit: Netflix
Dir: Simon Stone. Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan, Lily James, Johnny Flynn, Ken Stott, Ben Chaplin, Monica Dolan. 12 cert, 112 mins
In the summer of 1939, as a million British soldiers prepared for war, a grave was found in a field at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. Its occupant had been buried in the belly of an 89-foot ship that had been hauled up from the nearby river, sunk into the soil up to its rim, then covered over by an earthen mound.
Just before the outbreak of the World War II, a small-time archeologist was hired by a local woman to excavate her land. The thought was that it possibly contained some