Skip to main content

The Dig Produces a Disappointing Find


The Dig is that kind of movie that is very interesting, though not very enjoyable. A well-performed yet often dry British period drama about the discovery of an age-old Anglo-Saxon burial site at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk in 1939, there’s a lot of fascinating material the film touches on in terms of archaeology and history, but it struggles to retain investment as it pairs these elements with largely uninspired character drama and tedious plotting. The film is the second from director Simon Stone, after his acclaimed Australian drama The Daughter in 2015. Like that film, The Dig has a remarkable cast that reliably distracts from the mediocre direction, but they’re not enough to carry the film over its’ own tenuous mounds.
Right off, we’re introduced to Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown, amateur archaeologist hired to excavate the burial mounds at the Sutton Hoo estate of Edith Pretty, played with considerable restraint especially given her last performance, by Carey Mulligan. Clearly conveyed and emphasized is the underdog nature of the endeavour, the attitude of dismissal by professionals towards the site, and the visual character of the two leads: Edith, despite being a landowner having the candour, fashion, and decorative style of a working woman -in addition to her sickness, while Basil is likewise unremarkable in his attitude, appearance, and stark cockney dialect that reminds me of Fiennes’ last use of that accent in In Bruges. I don’t disparage Stone for applying such easy shorthand because it is effective, and in the case of this story by all accounts at least somewhat accurate. However, it does imprint on the film a certain identity, one that sits comfortably alongside those other vaguely inspirational British period dramas that I referenced in relation to last years’ Summerland, if some of the production values are noticeably stronger.
One of the movies’ few real rays of light is its’ sweet cinematography and location shooting (it was shot not too far away from the actual site). Unlike a Summerland, where the gorgeousness of the cliffs and the beaches mostly does the work for you, The Dig had to make the hilly farmland of Suffolk look romantic, rich, and ancient. And to their credit, Stone and Mike Eley do that quite well, it really feels like there’s another world brimming just beneath each barrow and grassy knoll. As befitting this  atmosphere, the scenes centred around the digging, and especially the first big unearthing are the highlights that betray what the movie is aiming for -or at least what it would be most successful at if it didn’t occupy its’ runtime with other things.
The initial layman investigation period and cordial relationship with hints of romance that grows between Basil and Edith is coated with a sheen of pleasurable privacy: the woman with a fascination in archaeology and the man who’s self-taught basking in the excitement of discovery and personal vindication. And then a seeming army of Cambridge scientists come along and ruin the peace. It’s here where the banal character drama really starts to overtake the subject matter, particularly in a dull love triangle between Lily James’ Peggy Piggott, her closeted husband Stuart (Ben Chaplin) and Basil’s charming assistant (Ediths’ cousin) Rory (Johnny Flynn). All three are great actors and all three are wasted here; especially James who, despite playing one of the major figures of twentieth century British archaeology, is given few opportunities to demonstrate so. Rather, she is consigned to being defined by her short-lived romance with Rory.
The counterpart material with Basil and Edith works better in part because the actors are allowed a little more, and Fiennes genuinely is quite good throughout, in his bashfulness yet quiet confidence. Mulligan gets her moments too, in a few key scenes with her children and in her reticence to the findings being moved to London where she fears they will be destroyed in the bombings  -the conflict of ownership that is a crucial part of the films’ last act. And that relationship between the two as well, built on a mutual admiration in addition to possible sentimental insinuations is mildly compelling, but ultimately unsustainable. Not just due to her terminal illness and the temporary nature of his assignment, but because the script isn’t wholly interested in engaging with it on a substantive level. At the end of the day it makes me wonder if these peoples’ stories were really worth telling.
And then I think, of course they were. Especially Basil Brown and Peggy Piggott, who genuinely made important contributions in their field that have facilitated a better understanding of British history. The Dig was just the wrong way to go about it. In isolated moments it succeeds at impressing the weight of this enterprise and the excitement of archaeological pursuit in general; but that not being as primary the focus as it ought to be detracts from the overall appeal. It’s only half as invigorating as any documentary that has been made on unearthing relics of antiquity, hell I’m sure even this specific story has gotten that treatment. There is a way that Stone could have married  that significance of the dig with the personal stories of the people involved. Instead what was translated was a competent, often pretty, but shallow enactment of an important moment in British archaeology; one that, watching for two hours in the comfort of my home, I admit I couldn’t help being distracted from now and again.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Stylish and Charmingly Reinvented David Copperfield

The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account)  is the most important book Charles Dickens ever wrote. It is not the most famous or influential by any means (that would of course be A Christmas Carol ), but it is the book that is the purest expression of the authors’ style, identity, and worldview. It is his most personal work, semi-autobiographical in its story of the chronology from infancy to adulthood of a character who overcomes great loss and hardships to find a fulfilling life as a writer. To read David Copperfield  is to understand Dickens himself. Armando Iannucci knew this when he decided to make a new adaptation of the novel for a twenty-first century audience. He also knew that Dickens adaptations are ubiquitous at this point. Films are a bit rarer, but every few years a new television adaptation rears its head to keep the authors’ unique world an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more