And she is attracted to Edith’s (fictional) cousin Rory (Johnny Flynn). But along with Phillips is the mousy scholar Stuart Piggott (Ben Chaplin), a dull fellow who is failing to satisfy his young wife Margaret (Lily James) emotionally. But then the grand folk from London arrive, intent on taking possession of their precious discovery: Ken Stott is on great form as the pompous British Museum archaeologist Charles Phillips, his face as fierce and red as a toby jug.

Mulligan is Edith Pretty: intelligent, beautiful, lonely and mysteriously moved by what Brown is uncovering and by Brown’s own quietly messianic sense of purpose. Fiennes plays him as someone who knows his worth, and he insists on getting two pounds a week from Mrs Pretty for his work and for his lifetime’s knowledge. Ralph Fiennes plays Brown, a tough, self-reliant man of few words and an outdoor tan, who does a fair bit of pipe-filling, pipe-smoking and pipe-biting. The movie is vigorously adapted by screenwriter Moira Buffini from the 2007 novel by journalist and author John Preston – whose aunt Margaret Piggott was involved in the dig. He had been hired by the local landowner and widow Edith Pretty, who had long nursed an instinct that there was something in the “mounds” on her property. It is based on the true story of the sensational Sutton Hoo excavation in Suffolk on the eve of the second world war an Anglo-Saxon burial ship was found by the self-taught working-class archaeologist Basil Brown, whose historic discovery the academic establishment instantly tried to appropriate, without credit. This doesn’t stop The Dig being engaging, and with a beautiful sense of landscape. Mulligan and Fiennes look like two characters who have been written out of their own soap opera. But the passions mostly stay buried, and the movie is disconcertingly structured in such a way that we are first asked to invest in these two intriguingly complex personalities, but then – just when their emotions might get disinterred – the focus shifts to a younger pair with more obvious romantic potential, played by Johnny Flynn and Lily James. T he Dig is actually not a very earthy film, though there is intelligence and sensitivity and a good deal of English restraint and English charm, thoroughly embodied by the fine leading performers Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes.

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