The gentleman is not an archaeologist, as he’s quick to point out - he’s merely an amateur “excavator” with a deep knowledge of history, a shyness and modesty in his manner, and a seemingly endless supply of dirt-specked tweed suit jackets.Įdith feels that the land on her estate may be home to a Viking burial ground Basil thinks there’s something even older lurking under there. Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan), a widow of some taste and renown, has hired a local named Basil Brown ( Ralph Fiennes) to help her locate any potential findings.

Behind a large manor in Suffolk, there are a number of jutting, earthen mounds that suggest the possibility of ancient artifacts buried beneath the soil. Britain stands on the verge of war, as the RAF planes constantly buzzing past can attest. The year is 1939, the countryside is English, the upper lips are most definitely stiff. In the final moments of the movie, epilogue text tells us that when the artifacts found at the site were finally displayed to the public after the end of the war, Brown’s name wasn’t even mentioned as a footnote.A quick methadone hit for anyone still experiencing Merchant-Ivory withdrawal symptoms, The Dig (streaming on Netflix starting January 29th) is a throwback to a bygone era in more ways than one. Their arrival threatens Brown’s authority on the site, and indeed his very legacy, which like the Sutton Hoo treasure he discovered, lay dormant for years. As it turns out, her land is the site of a nearly intact Anglo-Saxon royal burial ship, a groundbreaking discovery that attracts the attention of the toffs at the British Museum. With World War II looming on the near-horizon, the widowed mother of one wants to find out if there’s anything significant hidden underneath some unusual mounds of earth on her property, known as Sutton Hoo. Edith Pretty ( P romising Young Woman’s Carey Mulligan, who couldn’t look and sound more different).

Adapted from John Preston’s 2007 novel, The Dig tells the true story of Basil Brown (Fiennes), a self-taught excavator working for a regional museum who gets a last-minute job when he’s summoned to the country estate of Mrs.

Download movie the dig true story