Movie Reviews: Time running out in The Dig; and Synchronic with Jamie Dornan
The Dig is an elegant and absorbing film that puts flesh on the bare bones of history.
The momentous events of 1939 provide the backdrop to (12A), which stars Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown, a self-taught archaeologist who is invited to excavate a number of mounds on the land of Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. The working-class Basil and the upper-class Edith are an unlikely pair, but they share a passion for bringing the past to life. That the dig unearths an undreamed-of treasure is only part of the story: Edith, a widow, has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and time is running out if she is to succeed in uniting past, present and future. Adapted by Moira Buffini from John Preston’s novel (which is based on a true story), and directed by Simon Stone, The Dig is a film that employs the method of its metaphors, painstakingly brushing away at the surface to reveal the truth of its characters. Carey Mulligan is superb as the refined, reserved Edith, whose ethereal persona masks a fierce love for her soon-to-be-orphaned young son Robert (Archie Barnes) and an obsession with ‘disinterring the dead’; Fiennes, meanwhile, is equally captivating as the socially awkward Basil, who combines an appetite for backbreaking work with an intelligence that goes beyond archaeology to embrace astronomy and physics. The story goes off at something of a tangent when the Sutton Hoo dig is hijacked by the self-important bigwigs from the British Museum, led by Charles Phillips (Ken Stott), and afterward pursues a parallel subplot exploring the troubled marriage of Peggy (Lily James) and Stuart Piggott (Ben Chaplin), but for the most part is an elegant and absorbing film that puts flesh on the bare bones of history. (Netflix)
