The Dig
1939. As World War II loomed a widow in Suffolk calls on a local archaeologist (or is it excavator?) Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to investigate some mounds on her property. On a personal note, Basil lived in the village in Suffolk where I (mostly) grew up. This film is about his involvement in the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon burial, an oaken ship and a chamber of tremendously important finds. The whole site is one of the most important discoveries of the 20th Century. And Basil Brown may be one of the few in the profession whose name is common knowledge in Britain: the other being Howard Carter, who is name-checked early on.
Obviously in the world of films the most famous archaeologist isn’t really anything of the sort. And if archaeologists who bemoaned the Indiana Jones films, pointing out that archaeology is about careful study and the delicate recovery of items which are treated with the utmost care and respect, and rules about what should happen when such things are unearthed. Those people are in luck because this is the film for them—I hope!
It’s also a film about people’s position in society, in the country, the world and the history of this world and the space around it. It’s often a rather fascinating study of how the class system can erode and bury people if they don’t wield their own will very strongly in their own favour. Basil Brown in this film is a wise and knowledgable man who is perfectly aware of his own value. Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan—who is very good) is widowed with a young son. She calls Basil in, and Ipswich Museum warn her that he is “difficult” and “untrained”. Basil points out that he is not untrained and it’s clear to see that he isn’t difficult either. Edith has a feeling about one mound in the field, but Basil begins on another. There is some early drama, and we learn that Edith suffers from what’s called “heartburn”. Doctors tell her that the is “a worrier” and must learn not to be, or she will give herself an ulcer. The fact of this condition and her ‘sense’ about the site is fascinating, because under a particular mound Basil unearths Sutton Hoo.
There will be all sorts of talk about whether the figures depicted in this story are given a fair hearing. The Ipswich Museum doesn’t come off very well: a curator called Guy Maynard (Peter McDonald) is very superior and quite unkind about Basil Brown. The Museum is eager to complete the excavation of a Roman villa before war is declared and they think nothing of Basil’s site. But Maynard is eclipsed by the ruddy-cheeked picture of absolute superiority from the British Museum: Charles Phillips (Ken Stott), who arrives and takes control of the site. This man is depicted laughing at darkened local pubs with his subordinates but he has no respect for Basil Brown and tells a young woman, archaeologist Peggy Piggot (Lily James) that she is on the site because she weighs very little and won’t damage the site. He also leans on everyone to get the artefacts donated to the British Museum and not to Ipswich.
This is a wonderful and typically British film about a significant historical find and the man who made it. Not only that but it’s a film about people who know their stuff existing in a world with people who’ve got status but no empathy. That spirit in this film is something that I found as moving as the evocation of a nation bracing itself and preparing for an oncoming tragedy. And then there’s Edith Pretty’s position of being determined whilst apparently having a huge burden of inner turmoil on her shoulders. We can take her instinct to be a sign of something unseen and maybe not even written down as history: perhaps it’s a bit of dramatic license to make the story seem more relatable. Either way she isn’t just the well-born lady who’s station in life means she can get Basil Brown the position and recognition that he deserved. But we’re assured that she did do all that she could in the end. And then there’s her son Archie, who is forced to ride all the way from the farm to Brown’s house to get him to come back. The relationship between Brown and the boy is very nicely played. The other man in the story, Rory Lomax—Edith’s cousin—is a fictional character who is mostly involved with Peggy, whose husband Stuart (Ben Chaplin) is not at all romantically or physically interested in her. Lomax is about to join the RAF and the threat of war and the danger to his life is a subplot later in the film as the boy needs a figure like Basil or Lomax in his life.
A lot of people who remember the real Basil Brown will be very happy that his story is being told because he was initially sidelined when the Sutton Hoo exhibition went on after the war. And Ralph Fiennes has taken great care to get the Suffolk accent down, which he does incredibly well. Not only that but the largely flat landscape with the great skies and the birds and the rivers all look incredible and the dig site itself is nicely recreated. There is drama now in archaeology!
By the way it’s thought that Saint Edmund might be buried under a tennis court in Bury St Edmunds.
Sutton Hoo | National Trustwww.nationaltrust.org.uk › sutton-hoo
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/sutton-hoo-and-europe
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