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It’s why Brown fears the snobbish Phillips will erase his name from the discovery, why Mrs. The possible Viking ship Brown uncovers, from its intended purpose as a tomb to its clear symbolism as an artifact of legacy, represents the cyclical ways humans try to commemorate our brief time on earth. Pretty’s dread of her mortality and her desire to be remembered. But neither of those subplots pull with the same intensity as Mrs. Other arcs take flight, too, as Robert comes of age through fairy tales, and Stuart explores a latent gay relationship with a colleague. With the sparsest of screen time, they maintain Peggy and Rory’s simmering mutual desire with a knowing glance here, an eye-lock there. James and Flynn are also such an aesthetically pleasing pair. Peggy and Rory’s swooning romance, weighed by the latter’s looming deployment to the RAF, not only brings this slow burn to a boil, but it makes the war’s oncoming dangers immediately felt.
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Pretty’s serene patch of land, captured by cinematographer Mike Eley in lyrical handheld shots, is untethered from the worried country. The signs of looming war are everywhere in The Dig: RAF planes fly above the Suffolk countryside, fresh recruits are boarding the backs of army trucks, and in London, soldiers are sandbagging statues. It’s through their burgeoning love the outside world impedes upon the dig. Pretty’s dashing cousin Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn). Peggy, is left unnoticed until she comes under the romantic eye of Mrs. Stuart finds far more comfort in the company of his male friends. He opts for single beds at their inn, and ignores Peggy’s multiple shows of affection.
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Though Stuart cares for Peggy, his affections are rarely intimate. Phillips commandeers the site and brings in other archeologists, like married couple Stuart (Ben Chaplin) and Peggy Piggott (Lily James) to assist in excavating.
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Pretty and Brown to another swirling romance, the narrative gains momentum.Īfter Brown discovers a possible Viking ship underneath the burial mounds, the site comes to the attention of the pretentious Charles Phillips (Ken Scott), archaeologist for the British Museum. Once Stone diverts his focus from both Mrs. Though Stone thankfully doesn’t remain in that register for long, the suggestion that this will be a standard romance makes the film’s opening duller than it needs to be. The decision pitches The Dig in with other conventional period pieces, such as The Last Samurai and Where Angels Fear to Tread, where the widowed wife falls for a man who arrives by chance. Pretty as a singularly determined woman, willful enough, in later scenes, to fight the British Museum for control of the Anglo-Saxon artifact, he obscures her identity as an older mother in the hopes of teasing her as a potential love interest for the significantly older Brown (Ralph Fiennes). Pretty giving birth to her son Robert (Archie Barnes) when she was 47. The decision to cast Mulligan might stem from the reality of Mrs. Mulligan is usually an assured actor, but in The Dig, where she isn’t even aged by makeup or prosthetics, she’s woefully miscast as a woman beaten down by the ravages of old age. Pretty was in her late 50s during the film’s pre-World War II historical events, but Stone makes her two decades younger. And she suffers from an unknown debilitating ailment, initially diagnosed as ulcer-related anxiety, that zaps much of her vigor. Her conservative wardrobe consists of large overcoats, ankle-length floral-patterned dresses, and understated bonnets, which match her reserved personality. Instead, its pastoral love story serves those in search of a melodramatic escape.Ĭonsider the casting of Carey Mulligan as Mrs.
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The Dig steers clear of the nitty-gritty detail some archaeology aficionados might crave. Simon Stone’s historically inspired Netflix film The Dig, adapted by Moira Buffini from Preston’s novel, seizes on the little-known historical event to craft a sometimes tedious romance concerning war and mortality that’s bitten by tired Hollywood conventions. Their partnership, along with the help of others, led to one of Britain’s biggest archaeological finds - a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon burial ship. While many believed the mounds dated back to the Vikings, Brown had other ideas. Pretty hired Brown, described by his colleagues as a difficult and unorthodox man, to mine the large burial mounds occupying her backyard. Robert Preston’s 2007 historical novel The Dig was inspired by a little-known but historically significant British event: on the eve of World War II, in 1939 Suffolk, a self-taught yet well-experienced excavator, Basil Brown, was called to the country estate of Edith Pretty, a widowed mother of one.