By Andy Ford, Warrington South CLP member
“The Dig” is an account of the 1939 excavations in Suffolk that led to discovery of the magnificent Anglo-Saxon treasure at Sutton Hoo. It uses a lightly fictionalised version of real events to examine the English class system and the cost of the rigidities imposed on people at that time.
The film begins with Mrs Pretty, a landowner, commissioning a local man, Basil Brown, to excavate some mounds on her land. Basil was not a university archaeologist; in fact he left school at the age of 12 and was employed as a lowly ‘excavator’ – title he proudly used himself. Nevertheless, his practical skills and knowledge allow him to detect the remains of an ancient Saxon ship-burial, despite the wooden timbers having decayed to just darker coloured sand.
By meticulous technique he exposes the complete structure of the ship. But as it becomes clear that he has discovered a truly remarkable find, the official academic archaeologists arrive and try to take over. They even try to demote Brown to merely guarding the site. However, Mrs Pretty, as the owner of the site, is able to put her foot down and insist that Brown continues his involvement.
The film then moves into quite a melancholy mood. Mrs Pretty has an incurable heart condition and knows that her time is limited, and she fears for the future for her son Robert. A lot of the characters have gaps in their lives – Mrs Pretty is widowed and slightly lonely; her son Robert has no father, and Basil Brown and his wife have not had children.
These personal losses are intertwined with the impending war, as squads of young soldiers are marched round the Suffolk countryside, ready to go to France, and people listen anxiously to their wireless sets. Ms Pretty contemplates her own mortality alongside the mortality of the long-lost Saxon king, whose treasure they are excavating.
There is also a sub plot of a young female archaeologist, Peggy Piggott, being employed principally because she is light and so will be less likely to damage the remains. Simply because of her gender her abilities and contributions are not valued by the upper-class male archaeologists, just as Basil Brown, despite his great abilities and in-depth knowledge can never be more than a mere ‘excavator’.
The actual Mrs Pretty died of her heart condition in 1942, aged just 59, and her son Robert never returned to Sutton Hoo. Basil Brown continued his historical work in Suffolk until 1965, but the university archaeologists did their best to write him out of the record and his name was not credited by the British Museum as the initial discover, until long after the treasure was displayed.
The real Basil Brown must have been quite something, as despite his lack of a formal education, he taught himself geology, geography and astronomy to diploma level by correspondence courses and also to speak French and Latin. Peggy Piggott, contrary to the sexism portrayed in the film, went onto a long and successful career in archaeology with an interest in everyday life in prehistory.
The ship burial itself is now thought to be that of Radwald, King of East Anglia, who lived about 600 CE. The discoveries helped rewrite English history as it was no longer possible to write off the Anglo-Saxons as ‘uncultured barbarians’, and their period of history as the ‘dark ages’.
“The Dig” has everything really – a good story, thought-provoking themes, great understated acting from Carey Mulligan (Mrs Pretty) and Ralph Fiennes (Basil Brown), and outstanding photography of the beautiful Suffolk countryside from Mike Eley. The film makers have departed slightly from actual events to bring out the world of the 1930s, where most people struggled to reach their potential, being imprisoned within the social roles set for them by their class or gender, and to convey the sense that life is fleeting but that everyone leaves something behind.
“The Dig” is available on Netflix.
