“That’s life what’s revealed,” Brown says in a thick Suffolk accent. They share a quiet determination and mutual respect, initially arguing over which of the 18 mounds to tackle first, but finding common ground in the soil and its secrets. The film approaches English passions cautiously, shining a light on Brown’s incredible contribution, as well as that of Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan), the landowner who hired Brown to dig under the mounds on her estate because she had a “feeling” they would find something of note.įiennes and Mulligan are flawless as the excavators that the professionals underestimate, imbuing their characters with an intelligent zeal for the field that isn’t dampened by their places in society: he’s a lowly contractor for the Ipswich Museum, she’s a wealthy widowed landowner who went to finishing school. It is directed by Simon Stone with a distinctly British tone of restraint worthy of film producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory, who made the 1990s hits Howards End and The Remains of the Day. The Dig, based on the novel of the same name by John Preston, rights that wrong. Being an independent scholar without an academic post was an irregularity that led to the omission of his name at the British Museum’s display of the Sutton Hoo treasures for decades. He was a self-educated archaeologist and astronomer, who spent much of his income as a tenant farmer and insurance agent on that education. However, it was very nearly missed – and Brown wasn’t always acknowledged for his efforts. It is now considered one of the most important finds in Britain, the majesty of its 27-metre burial ship and 7th-century Anglo-Saxon treasures reframing historians’ view of the so-called Dark Ages. BASIL BROWN, played in The Dig by Ralph Fiennes, was the principal archaeologist behind the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England.

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