The Dig didn’t really arrive with much fanfare or hoopla, just sort of showing up on Netflix with hardly a howdy-do. It’s understandable, I suppose, with the market so utterly saturated with content, even a film with names like Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan can go by almost unnoticed. So, let me introduce you to a surprisingly interesting story that gets its roots from reality and makes archaeology fun to watch … without a whip or fedora. Well, without a whip at least.
Set in the late 1930s, a woman named Edith Pretty (Mulligan) is a wealthy landowner in Sutton Hoo on the eastside of England. She’s a widow raising a precocious boy named Robert (Archie Barnes) and on their expanse of land are tucked away a series of large earthen mounds assumed to be burial sites. She hires a digger named Basil Brown (Fiennes), a somewhat well-known excavator, to see what he can find beneath. Brown is a meticulous man with a history of work for museums, and in time, while war spreads over Europe, comes upon a remarkable find. It seems, despite what the local museum suggest, that these are not the remnants of Viking invaders as was so common in these parts, but something well before their time, that of Anglo-Saxon settlers. As such, when one mound reveals itself to be a whole ship leaden with treasures, Brown is quickly shuttled to the side while “experts” from the British Museum step in. And that’s only half the drama mixed up in all this dirt.
There’s not much action per se in director Simon Stone‘s moody and atmospheric period film, meaning Brown isn’t globetrotting about amid fistfights and nefarious Nazi interlopers seeking artifacts to boost their cause. Instead, the film is almost entirely set in the pastoral fields of the Sutton Hoo estate, occasionally coming inside the vast manor to check in on the – as we come to learn – sickly Edith, who has little strength in her, including a tender heart. Brown, who is married to a sturdy and supportive woman (Monica Dolan ) a bit away from his work, offers Edith some appeal, though he is not a distracted man and has no intents on the fair woman. This sets up a minor bit of tension in the story but is only one of two romantic threads that are of some troublesome entanglements.
Just when the story gets itself sunken into the piles of dirt and spats about who controls what and where things should end up, in enters the lovely Peggy Piggott (Lily James), the young wife of Stuart Piggott (Ben Chaplin), a museum archaeologist, joining the team working on the site. She’s a fresh and bubbly presence but also highly educated and well-suited for the identifying and registering of artifacts, but because, you know, men, she’s seen more suitable for hands in the dirt ’cause she super small. That does pay off though as she makes a substantial discovery, however, the larger problem she has is that Stuart has no interest in his new wife, who makes several seductive attempts to lure him to her bed. Alas, he’s more drawn to another man on the site, leaving the neglected Peggy to set her eyes on the handsome Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn), a young man soon to join the Royal Air Force – a post not exactly all that high on the survivability index in times of war.
Adapted from John Preston‘s 2007 novel of the same name, The Dig is an intriguing true story, despite some shenanigans with actual history. While the Sutton Hoo dig is considered one of the most important archeological discoveries in England, firmly establishing the Anglo-Saxon presence and glimpses into their livelihood (parts of this is thought to have inspired the Beowulf), the people around the story are not quite as reflective of the truth. I’ll leave that for you to dig up on your own if so inspired, but suffice to say that while much of what is seen on screen is at least representative of what happened, a few twists are in play, including the addition of a fictional character. Either way, let’s judge the film on its entertainment rather than its adherence to history. Few movies get that right anyway.
For the most part, The Dig is a satisfying drama though it chooses to make the drama more about the interactions of the people involved than the discoveries they make. That’s a narrative decision that certainly adds some humanity to the simple story, but the real fun is in the excellent portrayal of the dig itself, the whole thing looking practically exactly as it did so many decades prior. The best moments come when hands are in the dirt and there is a sense of wonder in what lies beneath, which Stone captures very well while sprinkling it with twists of unrequited love. Fiennes is stoic and efficient, deliberate and measured, giving Brown a deep sense of personal commitment to the almost excruciatingly small movements it takes to properly unearth that which has been buried in darkness for centuries. Mulligan, too, is soft and fragile, rarely speaking but cradled with final say of what is found on her land, stung by terrible fates in the matter of being a human in all their vulnerabilities.
Lily James is quite affecting, her light and spritely portrayal of the intelligent and sexual woman a nice addition, though the film seems to struggle with giving her proper place in the operatics of it all, a genuine shift in the narrative palabale on her mid-story arrival. This leaves long gaps with Edith’s place in all this as the story juggles the growing number of plot points, putting emphasis on Brown, Pretty, Robert, Stuart, Rory, the British Museum folk, war, and the mounds themselves. It’s a complex tapestry that works to underlie the message that secrets lay buried literally, physically in the past while secrets lay buried figuratively among those that seek to find them. It’s subtle and clever and I felt it, for its outcome, a moving experience if not a bit bulky in the upacking. That’s a minor setback.
Stone takes great care in building the small setting this all take place within, layering it in a sort of desaturated tranquility even as the horrors of war mount in the backgrounds and skies above. I was quite drawn to the estate and those toiling on it, Stone impressively restrained direction giving this a romanticized gleam that feels welcome. Poke around in The Dig and see what treasures you find.