"The Dig" is about how time leaves shards of history buried for centuries. At a deeper level it’s about how we sometimes bury our true self under a façade.
BASIL BROWN, played in
The Dig by Ralph Fiennes, was the principal archaeologist behind the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England. It is now considered one of the most important finds in Britain, the majesty of its 27-metre burial ship and 7th-century Anglo-Saxon treasures reframing historians’ view of the so-called Dark Ages.
However, it was very nearly missed – and Brown wasn’t always acknowledged for his efforts. He was a self-educated archaeologist and astronomer, who spent much of his income as a tenant farmer and insurance agent on that education. Being an independent scholar without an academic post was an irregularity that led to the omission of his name at the British Museum’s display of the Sutton Hoo treasures for decades.
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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Simon Stone’s
The Dig, now on Netflix, starring Carrey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes, began its source material excavation in 2006. Producer Ellie Wood had then finished John Preston’s historical novel, The Dig, a semi-fictional work (which, at the time, had yet to be released) expanding on the real 1939 archeological excavation at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, England. She immediately wanted to turn the story into a film and soon sent the story to screenwriters.
What Wood saw was a trove of dramatic character relationships. She explained this insight to the BBC. “As the ship is revealed, so are the inner lives of the people involved, and that’s what seemed so powerful and original to me.” Wood wanted the film to further explore these hidden character tensions, the “simmering feelings kept in check by British reserve and the class structure.”