Edith would have been a teenager in 1922. Tutankhamun's tomb was excavated in 1922 by British Egyptologist Harold Carter, whom Edith name-drops at one point. They share a passion for knowledge, for discoveries of the linkages between eras and peoples. They come from two totally different worlds and classes. The first half of the film is mostly Mulligan and Fiennes, and there's an interesting dynamic at work. Father-dominated her whole life, now widowed, in very poor health herself, she makes the decision to dig up those mounds, even though war is imminent. This sad backstory is described in just one or two lines, but it's all over Mulligan's pinched determined face, dogged by loss and disappointment.

She took care of her father through his long illness, and only got married after he died. Edith had a youthful interest in archaeology, and was accepted to university. Told with simplicity and grace, and a sensitivity to the pastoral Suffolk landscape of wide fields and wider skies, 'The Dig' is often quite thrilling, particularly in the dig's initial phases, when it's just Basil and Edith discussing how to proceed. At first Basil utilizes just a small ad-hoc team, but after the ship is revealed, throngs of people descend onto Suffolk, wanting a piece of the action.

Young Robert latches on to Basil as a new father-figure, and cavorts around on the mound as Basil digs. She offers him more money than the museum, so he gets to work. These sites have been picked over by people for centuries, he informs her. Edith Pretty ( Carey Mulligan), a widowed woman living on a huge estate with her small son Robert ( Archie Barnes), hires Basil away from the Ipswich Museum to dig up the mounds on her property. Basil Brown ( Ralph Fiennes) is a humble man, of working-class origins, who was taught how to excavate archaeological sites by his father and his grandfather before him.

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