{"id":3526,"date":"2021-02-02T15:09:25","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T14:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=3526"},"modified":"2021-02-02T15:10:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T14:10:21","slug":"the-dig-a-triumph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=3526","title":{"rendered":"The Dig – A triumph"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>So archaeology can make for a great movie. <\/strong>Don\u2019t be put off by the rather patronising review in the Guardian<\/a> or some carping criticism about historical accuracy. The Dig<\/em>, streaming from today as cinemas closed, is an excellent film and worth catching.<\/strong> I wouldn\u2019t be at all surprised if it gets a few BAFTA nominations and deserves to.<\/p>\n

I did initially approach with suspicion as to whether it was the sort of quiet English period piece which would irritate me for being underscripted and too pleased with itself. Like too much Sunday afternoon television. But this tale of the discovery of the Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon longship in a Suffolk field <\/strong>just before the war has a quite unexpected and moving performance by Ralph Fiennes \u2013 a career best \u2013 playing a deep East Anglian countryman with not just the accent, but the staggered delivery that makes the Suffolk voice so memorable. He apparently had a lot of training in \u2018suffolkation\u2019 from local expert Charlie Haylock, and it shows.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s not the only reason to see it.\u00a0 There is some unusually fine ensemble acting, helped by the fact that the Australian director Simon Stone comes out of experimental theatre where he has been much heralded; this is his first film and he manages to get some subtle performances all round, leaving in the silences, helped by a good script from the successful novel by John Preston.<\/p>\n

The cinematography also manages to get a great deal out of beauty out of the flat Suffolk landscape that others often pass by. \u00a0\u00a0I learned to sail up and down the River Deben not far from the Sutton Hoo site and I have always loved the area (The Suffolk coast: 50 years on from my childhood holidays<\/a>).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nicole Kidman was originally slated to play the female lead<\/strong> until almost the beginning of production, and would have been a big box office name (although would the Americans have needed subtitles for Ralph Fiennes?) But she then dropped out, leaving them in the lurch \u2013 so, in the space of one frantic weekend, they got in Carey Mulligan, who plays the widowed owner of the Suffolk land on which the longships are found well, probably better than Kidman ever would have. She could easily be up for two nominations, along with her diametrically different Promising Young Woman<\/em> performance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Edith Pretty (sitting in the centre on the edge of the trench) observes the dig. Photograph by OGS Crawford, who did a great deal of pioneering aerial photography of archaeology<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But the real reason for seeing it is that films about archaeology are intrinsically hard to pull off \u2013 digging laboriously in the soil is not very cinematic \u2013 and this one really works. The sense of deep time as contrasted against the pressures of the present are brought out<\/strong>. ‘From the first human handprint on a cave wall, we are part of something continuous,\u201d as Fiennes\u2019s character says. There is a very clever play on the way that no one is interested in excavating the barrows when they think they might contain nasty Viking invaders, but as soon as they realise they might be \u2018our Anglo-Saxon boys\u2019, it\u2019s game on for the British Museum.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em> complains petulantly that it doesn\u2019t fulfil the usual narrative expectations of girl meets boy, but that\u2019s a strength not a \u00a0weakness – the laconic style worked beautifully for me and that\u2019s not just because I\u2019m a natural sucker for anything to do with Suffolk, although I am. When I used to spend holidays there as a boy, they always pronounced my name \u2018Oo\u2019.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m not too concerned by some of the fictional compression. The actual dig took place over two seasons, in \u201838 and \u201939; some artefacts found on one mound were moved to another; Peggy Piggott, who makes the first discovery of a gold object in the burial chamber at the centre of the longship, was less of an archaeological ingenue than the film implies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Stuart and Peggy Piggott, as portrayed in the film by Ben Chaplin and Lily James<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But I do find it oddly disturbing that the marriage between Peggy and Stuart Piggott, portrayed here as fleeting, with them arriving from their honeymoon and parting shortly otherwise, actually lasted 20 years. It had begun some years before Sutton Hoo and only ended in 1956. Nor is there any substantial evidence that Piggott himself, who went on to have one of the most impressive careers in British archaeology, was gay, as the film suggests. This does seem quite a licence to take with people\u2019s real lives, even if it makes for some dramatic tension (Peggy can then be attracted to a young RAF pilot, a fictional character invented for the novel).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a quibble. Far more important is that this shows how novels and indeed films about archaeology can generate considerable dramatic tension and I speak as someone who\u2019s been working on an archaeological novel about Peru for the last 10 years. So yes I have an interest. Let\u2019s hope it wins some Baftas! And \u2013 if they can understand Ralph Fiennes\u2019 \u2018suffolkation\u2019 \u2013 perhaps even an Oscar as well\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

———————-<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Dig<\/em> is streaming on Netflix<\/p>\n

There are some interesting photos comparing the actual dig to the film version at this British Museum blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

John Preston also wrote the book about Jeremy Thorpe that was turned into A Very English Scandal<\/em> with Hugh Grant.<\/p>\n

The Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company have a current project to build a full-size replica of the 90 ft longship, so that it can be sailed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So archaeology can make for a great movie. Don\u2019t be put off by the rather patronising review in the Guardian or some carping criticism about historical accuracy. The Dig, streaming from today as cinemas closed, is an excellent film and worth catching. I wouldn\u2019t be at all surprised if it gets a few BAFTA nominations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,135],"tags":[169,170,171],"class_list":["post-3526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-films","tag-piggott","tag-sutton-hoo","tag-the-dig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3526"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3538,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526\/revisions\/3538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}