Dates are important – not just those of fourteen hundred years ago or for the ways in which the past impacts on the present, but the year of the film’s action. Planes flying overhead as digging goes on below remind us that war with Germany will shortly become actual, foreshadowed by a solemn radio announcement from Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Against these widely spaced historical periods, Stone, working from Moira Buffini’s screenplay, introduces the film’s two protagonists who will be crucial to the discovery and who are also drawn from real-life people.

Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown in The Dig (Larry Horricks/Netflix © 2021)

Mrs Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) is the upper-class owner of the fields containing the burial mounds, and of a handsome mansion. She employs working-class Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to investigate the mounds. Class is certainly a factor, but the film has more important matters on its mind, as apparently did the real-life pair. Brown, always properly dressed with tie and waistcoat, is a self-taught archaeologist who describes himself as an ‘excavator’: ‘I’ve been on the digs since I was old enough to hold a trowel.’ Mrs Pretty, now a widow with a young son, has always regretted that her father did not allow her to go to university.

From their first scene together, Mulligan and Fiennes register with quiet conviction the different worlds they inhabit, while also establishing the interest they share and the way in which the long-ago past will come to shape their present lives. It is perhaps the least conventional depiction of the English class system in a British film: the two find connection, but without snobbery on Pretty’s side or deference on Brown’s. Politely but firmly, he makes clear that he will need a slightly higher wage than she has offered, and she, without hauteur, accepts his request. There is no sentimentality in rendering the ensuing relationship; there is mutual respect and sympathy for the problems each deals with; and there is a touching rapport between Brown and Pretty’s fatherless son, Robert (Archie Barnes), who admires Brown’s skills.  

The discovery of the ancient burial site and its treasures inevitably leads to wider conflict. Stone maintains a steady interaction between the personal and the broader social issues. When Cambridge archaeologist Charles Phillips (Ken Stott) appears on the scene, he seeks to assert a different authority over the findings, bringing others to the site, but Mrs Pretty isn’t ready to concede. It is, after all, on her property, and again this point is made without undue dramatics: she is fascinated by the discovery, values Brown’s contribution, and wants to ensure this is recognised. Phillips wants the recovered pieces of treasure to be accommodated by the British Museum. This becomes another matter of contention when there is a local wish for them to be installed in the Ipswich Museum. What continually absorbs one’s attention is how the film registers these matters without recourse to melodramatic outbursts, let alone flamboyant CGI effects. Instead, it secures the viewer’s attention to the issues raised and the processes involved.

Carey Mulligan as Edith Pretty in The Dig (Larry Horricks/Netflix © 2021)

If there is one slight miscalculation in Buffini’s screenplay, it has to do with a romance when an aspiring young archaeologist, Peggy (Lily James), joins the dig with her husband, Stuart (Ben Chaplin), who is too preoccupied with other matters to pay her much attention. By chance, she meets and falls for Mrs Pretty’s handsome cousin Rory (Johnny Flynn). Although there is no problem with the acting of the three roles, there is a touch of the conventional about this plot element that is at odds with film’s overall tone.

The film may be seen as a study of the effects of the past on the present and of how the present may influence the future, and the sheer interrelatedness of the three tenses. The main focus is on how the 1939 present will accommodate the ancient Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain, but there is also the suggestion of how the incipient wartime conditions will affect the lives involved – and what will become of the Sutton Hoo relics. Concluding titles will clarify the latter, and there are intimations about the futures of the protagonists.

Like so many of today’s films, The Dig is produced by Netflix, but I would urge filmgoers to catch it on the big screen: as well as being thoughtful and subtle, it is also visually ravishing.

The Dig (Netflix), 112 minutes, is currently showing on Netflix and at select cinemas.