The author Donna Tartt concluded her 2013 novel The Goldfinch with a line that captures the feelings of most anyone who loves art and history. It is so good that it should really be the raison d'être for any self-respecting art historian.
“And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.”
Netflix’s new film The Dig captures the feeling conveyed in the concluding lines of Tartt’s novel in cinematic form and plumbs the interconnectedness of art, history, and meaning. It is a beautiful and multi-layered exploration of the power of art to act as a historical through line; one which binds all of us to all of our predecessors and one which connects us to those we love. It also hints at the debt that spirituality owes to art and the way in which art and design can materialize ceremony, religion, and even the after life.
The Dig, which premiered on January 29 and was directed by Simon Stone, is based on the novel of the same name by the English writer John Preston. The story is a creative retelling of the events surrounding the discovery of the famed Sutton Hoo hoard by landowner Edith Pretty, played by Carey Mulligan, and amateur archaeologist Basil Brown, played by Ralph Fiennes. The veracity of the film’s depiction of the events that took place in the Suffolk countryside in the lead up the Second World War is somewhat in question. Artistic license has inflected both the book and the subsequent film with details that did not actually take place, but which marble the story with the kinds of romance and conflict necessary to a book or film that might engage with audiences broader than say, the archaeology department at your local university.
Thankfully, as someone with next to no significant knowledge of archeology, I watched the film with just enough inexpertness to find it enjoyable rather than infuriating. Watching it, too, was a poignant reminder of why art matters to our understandings of history and how art and objects are essential to narrating long forgotten events. In the movie, a widowed landowner with an interest in archaeology hires a journeyman “excavator” to open up ancient burial mounds that swell in fields nearby to her country house. What ensues is an archaeological and art historical discovery that will change the understanding of British history, and unearth a fabulous collection of armor and jewelry buried with an anonymous warrior king.
Within the context of this discovery, the film sets up characters to have probing moments of self-realization. It tugs at the heartstrings, occasionally veering perilously close to saccharine but mostly staying in its lane. The professional archaeologists in the movie meditate on how the finds will change history. The landowner Edith Pretty, herself dealing with a secret health condition, considers her own mortality and the nature of graves such as those being excavated. Brown, her trusty excavator, sidelined by museum professionals, worries about whether his contributions to the project will be remembered. Meanwhile, a fictional cousin of the protagonist makes the unsubtle observation that photographs he is taking of the dig will fix those moments in time, drawing a direct connection between the artistry dating to the 600s with the technology of the twentieth century.
The interlaid storylines of professional aspirations, personal passions, and intermingling desires form a tightly woven story exploring the facets of how culturally significant material like art and design can change how history is written and told. The Dig also explores the conflicts between professionals and amateurs and questions where great artistic finds should reside. Additionally, it considers the issue of “legacy” from multiple fronts. The legacy art leaves to history. The legacy historians leave to the ages. The legacy that love leaves with those around us.
The objects found by an untrained local “excavator” and a laywoman who reads Howard Carter’s account of opening King Tut’s tomb for leisure are some of the most significant in archaeology and in art history. In particular, the remarkably detailed pieces of goldsmithery procured from the burial mounds shaped new understandings of the history of art in East Anglia and beyond. The interwoven ribbons of Celtic design that mark the surfaces of these pieces are as tightly knit as the new film about their discovery.
Some eight decades on, the art objects found at Sutton Hoo are still inspiring new generations of visitors at the British Museum, where an entire gallery is dedicated to their exhibition and preservation. Netflix’s The Dig, dramatizes the exhumation of these important pieces of art and does so with an emotive lilt that makes archaeological finds seem as thrilling and romantic as anything can be. So, like the work of an archaeologist, an art historian, or a curator, the film becomes a kind of time capsule containing the wisdom of one pinpoint in history. It is, of course, an imperfect piece of history though, because it sacrifices some truths in the service of movie-making. But, it is a movie after all, and one that will move you.
Overall, The Dig is a rich story, which explores important themes and dusts off the world of archaeology with a dose of Hollywood magic. It will remind those who, in the words of Donna Tartt, “love beautiful things and look out for them” why they do what they do and might convince others to do the same.
Both the film and Tartt’s book assert, rightly, that art is a gift to history. A gold and garnet Sutton Hoo shoulder clasp, a 1930’s photograph, a film dating to the year 2021 can all do the same thing. They can tell the stories of the past to both contemporaries and to those who come after. In doing so, all art can deepen our understanding of ourselves, our world, and our collective history. And it can do so in deeply beautiful and resonant ways that will remain as treasures to be found again and again by new generations long after we are gone.
One of the exquisite gold shoulder clasps found at Sutton Hoo, now in the collection of The British Museum.