The Dig
“From the first human handprint on a wall, we’re part of something continuous.”
Basil explains to Edith why the unearthing of a find, such as the Sutton Hoo, an Anglo-Saxon ship filled with untold treasures, is important.
And I think this is why we also love, sail and chose to be the custodians of old boats – in doing so we are connected to something bigger than ourselves, a bigger story, a continuous story.
Set in England, pre-World War Two, THE DIG is a fictional account of a real event. With a young son, Edith is an upper-class widow with hopes, based on a hunch, to get an archaeological dig underway on her Estate before war is declared. However with soldiers signing up and Museums more concerned with packing up their pieces than unearthing more, Archaeologists are not to be found. Enter Basil, a working class Excavator – highly skilled with on the job learning but without a Cambridge degree. Edith and Basil form an immediate friendship based on respect for the work at hand and the dream of discovery.
‘Beneath the mound was the imprint of a 27m-long (86ft) ship. At its centre was a ruined burial chamber packed with treasures: Byzantine silverware, sumptuous gold jewellery, a lavish feasting set, and, most famously, an ornate iron helmet. Dating to the early AD 600s, this outstanding burial clearly commemorated a leading figure of East Anglia, the local Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It may even have belonged to a king.’
In this film, drama is driven by the fact the Royal Museum does indeed take over the dig, once Basil has discovered something rather fantastic and they get a whiff of the finds significance. There’s a love tryst and ongoing complications of relationships and social standings, health and wealth and war.
If you, like me, miss the grandeur and sweep of Merchant Ivory classics such as A Room with a View or Howard’s End, or the English romance of The Remains of the Day, The English Patient or Atonement, you are in for a treat. This is an exquisitely detailed film to watch.
‘Director Simon Stone and cinematographer Mike Eley keep nudging things gently into Terrence Malick territory, letting the camera roam behind and beside people in fields, or employing a wider-than-usual lens to give things a pleasantly unsteady, slightly off feel. (Someone’s been paying extremely close attention to the Emmanuel Lubezki method of drifting transcendentalism — Chivo touches abound here.) Several compositions involving natural light, lens flare, and negative space — notably a shot of Fiennes lighting a pipe in the frame’s corner while clear blue sky dominates the rest — are breathtaking. A sequence in which he sits by a marsh’s edge and watches a ghostly ship pass by, reminiscent of what he’ll eventually uncover, is enough to give you goose bumps.’
- Rolling Stone
While the fact the film centres on the discover of an ancient, planked vessel qualifies THE DIG a to be considered as must watch for us here at SWS, there is a greater theme of direct relevance. And it’s this - who ‘owns’ history and can it in fact, be owned? With this in mind, I feel proud of our early decision to use only the word custodian, not owner, in regards to boats. This line of thought also reminded me of one of my favourite quotes – ‘we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children’. Perhaps that’s the most positive way in which to think about our water craft, we are borrow our vessels - their pleasure, their wonder, their adventures - from the future and are always working towards the time when we will hand over our wooden histories to our children, rather than to museums.
THE DIG is a film of great British understatement. While the story builds, it is calm and languid, though found me wanting to get a trowel, roll up my sleeves and help. I loved it and I hope you do to. Watch it and let me know your thoughts in the comments below.