The cinematography of the expansive Suffolk landscape (although shot in Surrey) by Mike Eley ( My Cousin Rachel) is gorgeous and covers the gamut of weathers one finds in an English summer. Brown teaches Robert about astronomy, demonstrating the breadth and depth of the education he has given himself, despite leaving school aged 12. Fiennes is doing an accent I’m almost certain he hasn’t done before, despite the fact he is actually from Suffolk (a broad accent associated with country folk) and his dynamic with both Mulligan and Barnes is one of the highlights. It goes without saying that Mulligan and Fiennes are both tremendous. The quality of the ensemble cast is insanely deep – with the excellent actor Paul Ready (from two of the best TV shows of the last decade – Utopia and The Terror) in a minor role as Brown’s boss at the Ipswich Museum and Monica Dolan getting a bit more to sink her teeth into as Brown’s wife. This feels slightly tacked-on and as if it belongs to another film, leaving you kind of wishing they had either fully leaned into romance or left it out entirely. The other sub-plot which has been added in to liven things up (although if you’re a history nerd like me, you will find it fascinating enough!) is a tentative romance between two characters, although you will find no Ammonite-style raunchy sex scenes here. It also makes them consider legacy and what traces will be left of our time on earth. The war also puts things into perspective and the characters are forced to ask themselves why they care so much about ancient history with ‘bigger or more important’ things going on. LARRY HORRICKS/NETFLIX © 2021Ī sense of urgency (and therefore excitement) is injected into proceedings because of two main factors – the impending war (with Rory being keen to join the RAF) and Edith’s discovery that she has a terminal illness, giving it a sense of being a race against time. Charles Phillips (Ken Stott) from Cambridge University is put in charge of the excavation (once news gets out that it’s a major find) and much of the film focuses on the tension between him and the self-taught Brown. There is also Edith’s cousin Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn) – the only main character who is purely fictional – whose main role is to photograph the site. Halfway through the film, more characters come into play, with the arrival of archaeologist Stuart Piggott (Ben Chaplin) and his young wife Peggy (Lily James). She asks him to look into some mysterious mounds on her land and eventually an enormous ship is discovered beneath them. In 1938, she employs the services of Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), who works for the local Ipswich Museum, but who has no formal qualifications as an archaeologist. Mulligan plays Edith Pretty, a wealthy widow living in the beautiful manor house at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk with her young son Robert (Archie Barnes). The Dig is a very different, smaller and quieter film and it unfortunately seems to be entirely under most people’s radar (even within the film community), despite it having an absolutely stacked cast. Carey Mulligan is at the centre of much hype and awards buzz at the moment for Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman. However, with Francis Lee bringing fossil-hunter Mary Anning under the spotlight in Ammoniteand now Simon Stone unearthing the little-known story behind the excavation of Sutton Hoo, archaeologists are perhaps finally having their time to shine. Up until recently, depictions of archeologists on the big screen have pretty much been limited to the whip-cracking, fedora-toting adventurer Indiana Jones.
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