Their happiness, like the ship, was there the whole time. Still, there is something profound about a sleepy hamlet and mournful household being awakened by a lost artifact. Both are fantastic actors, and have a hot-blooded tension, but they feel extraneous. James slaps on some glasses and - presto! - bombshell to bookworm. Johnny Flynn plays Edith’s photographer nephew Rory, and Lily James is another archaeologist named Peggy. A romance doesn’t bloom, exactly, but rather a deep fondness that’s confusing for both. This is not the pair you’d expect to go to dinner and a movie.īut Edith is widowed with a young son (the remarkably expressive Archie Barnes), and clearly craves having a man around the manse. And she is, well, played by Carey Mulligan.

He’s married, a bit long in the tooth, and looks like he rolled around in a fireplace. Moira Buffini’s script works best when probing the peculiar relationship of Edith and Basil. “The Dig” stars Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan. She’s right! After a bit of shoveling, Basil finds a seventh century burial ship - think “Beowulf” - in the ground and enlists pals and locals to help him excavate it. The mumbler, Basil, arrives at a sprawling Suffolk estate covered in ancient mounds at the request of its owner, Edith (a contemplative Carey Mulligan), who has a hunch that they contain more than just dirt. “The Dig” is more fanciful than that, and the pastoral look of the film suggests it could’ve been written by Jane Austen, if Elizabeth Bennet had been a mumbling old guy. Director Simon Stone’s film does not follow the tired old “here’s how history was made!” rubric, though. It’s the true story of a self-taught archaeologist named Basil Brown (Fiennes) who, in 1938, discovered a game-changing treasure trove in England. It’s an intimate film that moves at the deliberate, careful pace of an excavation and, in so doing, uncovers a few gems along the way. “The Dig” has no plagues of locusts or melting human flesh - though Ralph Fiennes could use a shower. In select theaters Friday, on Netflix Jan. Rated PG-13 (brief sensuality and partial nudity).

Download film the dig true story