It's a measure of how long it's been since my head was really in the costume-drama game that my boss - no great admirer of period dramas - managed to watch Netflix's The Dig before I did. He seemed to quite like it, and he wasn't the only one. From the reviews I've read, this gentle film about an archeological find in Suffolk in 1939 was generally well received. People have apparently warmed to its atmosphere, class A acting and thoughtful pace. I ended up liking it too, but I have to admit that before I got properly into it I was bored.
Yes, the performances are excellent. Ralph Fiennes as self-taught excavation expert Basil Brown and Carey Mulligan as the fragile widow, aptly named Mrs Pretty, who hires him to find out what's hidden under some mysterious-looking mounds on her land give very strong central performances. What's more, every little role is cast with seasoned British acting pros (Danny Webb is the butler, because why not?). Yes, the rural surroundings look really nice, and the dialogue flows naturally without being either stilted in classic period-drama fashion or jarringly anachronistic. But - it has to be said - this story is not what I'd call a ripping yarn.
At first, I drummed my fingers impatiently. Then somewhere along the way, I just settled into the rhythm of the film. It unnerved me that it took me so long - I started to wonder again about my possibly devolving Macra brain - but in my defence, the plot lines are rather meandering, and not all of them go anywhere. There is a hinted-at attraction between Brown and Mrs Pretty (first name Edith), but it never evolves - they observe each other, at a suitable distance, to mournful piano music, and just as she's asked him to come round for dinner and he's accepted and is washing off the archeological grime, his hitherto unmentioned wife turns up. Mrs Brown is no shrew, either, but a decent woman with a lot of sympathy for her husband's dedication to his work (so there was no reason for Basil not to talk about her all the time, really). Romance is not on the cards, then.
Another plot line centres around Basil Brown being an unsung hero whose pivotal role in discovering the ship has been forgotten, pushed aside as he was by The Establishment. And I'm sure that's true, only the treatment of Basil, as depicted here, isn't that heinous. He isn't sacked from the dig when Phillips, the archeologist employed by the British Museum, turns up. However, he is sidelined, resigns and then returns (at the request of Edith and her son, according to the film). But the British Museum men aren't bunglers - they know their stuff and don't dismiss Brown's work and findings. Phillips (as played by Ken Stott) has grown stout, but is canny enough to leave the delicate work to his more nimble co-workers. It's not that I wouldn't have liked to have seen Fiennes's salt-of-the-earth excavator get his fair share of recognition. At the same time, I must say I rather saw Phillips's point when he didn't put Brown on a pedestal because Brown found a ship in a mound where he was expressly asked to dig by Mrs Pretty. I wasn't left feeling that there was any malice (perhaps not even that much snobbishness) behind the sidelining of Basil Brown.
Perhaps sensing a certain amount of plotlessness, the film tries to throw a love triangle (or quadrangle) into the mix, focusing on what I suspect are made-up characters taking part in the dig. But though I'm a sucker for romantic storylines, I felt like this plot could have been cut out altogether with no great ill effects. Lily James, somewhat deglamourised, brings her usual ingénue charm to the part of Peggy Piggott, newly wedded to archeologist Stuart Piggott. Only, he doesn't put out as he's clearly a closet case and attracted to a hot-in-an-academic-way young man who is also assisting at the dig. Which gives Peggy the perfect excuse to, if she chooses, get off with Edith's handsome photographer cousin Rory (Johnny Flynn, almost as sought after for likeable hero parts as James is for likeable young heroines).
This felt way too pat. I caught myself thinking, grimly and ungenerously, "good" when Peggy's and Rory's first tentative lovers' tryst didn't lead to anything. But then Peggy and her husband separate amicably after she gives an incredibly generous and civilised "it's not me it's you but that's OK" speech. After that, yeah, she did deserve some action with the photographer, but I can't say their romance ever gripped me. Also, nice as it is when a relationship can come to an end without anyone feeling hurt, where's the drama when there's no conflict?
The strongest part of the film, in my view, was when it played like a good old weepie. Edith finds out she's dying of a heart disease and is rightly worried about her young son Robert, an engaging English schoolboy of the imaginative, adventurous kind - he could have come right from the pages of 4.50 from Paddington. It is properly touching when mother and son bond with Basil while Edith's health declines, and the understanding Mrs Brown is ready to offer extra comfort if needed and doesn't mind her husband getting roped in as a surrogate father figure. The scene where Robert blames himself for his mother's condition - everyone told him it was his job to look after her when his father died, "and I failed" - had me sobbing, as did their final farewell ensconced in the excavated ship.
So yes, I'd recommend The Dig, for a lazy summer evening when you're not in the mood for a tense thriller. Also, it's best to catch a period drama full of old-fashioned virtues and devoid of Messages for our Modern Age like this one while there's still time. Something tells me they won't be making many more of them in the near future.
