Review: THE DIG

 

Rustic aristocrat Edith Pretty hires even more local self-taught archaeologist Basil to excavate and investigate some ancient mounds on her lands. What he uncovers is enough to rewrite history so the British Museum come barging in and take over, retaining Basil to hang around and clean up when needed. As the cast blooms so do the threads of plot and sub plot but the real tale here is the discovery of transience, permanence and continuation. The more we look at history the more we know we ourselves are history, our lives and deaths just more parts of the weave.

Lofty thoughts but can they weave a movie that runs just short of two hours? The answer is not just yes but a surprising yes. I use the weaving analogy advisedly: the interplay of directorial concept, writing and performance give us the human role from sweaty work to refined aloofness whereby the gigantic self knowledge of this unearthed treasure is blended with the central nervous systems of immediate needs as well as a look at the entropic cry of ambition. All that in such a quiet and superficially unimposing passage.

The other side of this, the other role, is played by the earth itself, here in a part of the country whose beige-with-benefits sombreness reminds all who walk upon the soil of where they are headed and that the wonders of the ancient site are just themselves plus time. Morning fogs with the sun a mere suggestion, the English country garden or featureless morasses with the rain, rain and rain.

The lead is shared between the redoubtable Carrie Mulligan as Edith Pretty and Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown. Both of these actors not only show great commitment in their characterisations but bring very strong voices. I last saw Carrie Mulligan as a suburban revenger with an American snarl that could tear plaster in Promising Young Woman. Here she reigns that in to deliver pain beneath the posh and it's just as strong. Ralph Fiennes is unforgettable to me since seeing him (wrongly) own Schindler's List (as soon as he appeared you forgot all about Schindler which really was not the point of that one). Fiennes is from the Suffock of the setting but he still needed a coach to get him to the trueditch dialect o' the paddocks and fields. Like Mulligan his sober front holds pain but his is a kind of preternatural sadness at his knowledge of the earth to earth. Elsewhere, Lily James is all libidinal force constrained in a non-physical marriage and Johnny Flynn toffs up the sexual edge he used in Beast.

Why was I so compelled by this? I began to watch as a demonstration of my upgraded Netflix sub to go with an upgraded system that would stream Dolby vision and atmos but I just kept watching. The themes of time and entropy are clear and in every scene but like the lead players they contain enough pain to power the slow roll of the story. I particularly liked one technique of playing relevant dialogue over different action with the same characters. It struck me as economical but also as effective in de-staging the performances and writing: we hear the ghost of conversations as they float around progressed time. I was surprised to find how much I did enjoy this seductively unassuming film. It's long. It's slow. It's deep.