If you’ve ever pined in/with regard to’concerning’regarding ‘Time Team: The Movie’, The Dig is in/with regard to’concerning’regarding you. Adapted from John Preston’s novel, Simon Stone’s film details one of Britain’s most notorious archaeological digs, the disco grossly in 1938 of an Anglo-Saxon ship in the burial mounds at the delightfully named Sutton Hoo estate in Suffolk. As anyone who’s followed Tony Robinson presiding over a three-day exploration of a Roman villa in the rain might guess, The Dig has to work hard to conjure up genuine dramas out of the minutiae of archaeology (this is no search in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the Ark Of The Covenant), never really raising the pulse rate, but it acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure s by on intense’fierce’exquisite perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mances, some gorgeous filmmaking and the always winning idea of rosy’remarkable’fabulous’terrific’preeminent individual coming toacquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure her to do rosy’remarkable’fabulous’terrific’preeminent things.###The heart of the film is the relationship between Lady Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan, in a utterly different mode from Promising Young Woman), the widowed landowner who owns the grounds on which the burial mounds are situated, and salt-of-the-earth Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), an untrained excavator who she commissions (not without money haggles) to uncover their secrets. There are conflicts — the battle between the amateur Basil and Edith and the British Museum (represented here by Ken Stott) in/with regard to’concerning’regarding ownership of the disco grossly ; Edith’s secret illness; an effective set-piece where the site collapses on a key character — but little that truly grapple s. What is refreshing, however, is Edith and Basil never begin a romantic relationship; instead, it’s a meeting of minds, individual who in/with regard to’concerning’regarding m an intellectual intimacy, and Mulligan and Fiennes play it exertion lessly. There’s also an infectious sense of wonder with regards to’concerning’with respect to uncovering history (“The Dark Ages are no longer dark”), rooted in the idea that the past gives hope in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the future.###For a film partly with regards to’concerning’with respect to the qualities of Suffolk soil, _The Dig_ could possess’own’nurse done with a bite more dirt and grit.###As the story takes place on the precipice of Britain joining World War II, the notion of art surviving in/with regard to’concerning’regarding centuries but life itself being grossly fleeting comes to the in/with regard to’concerning’regarding e in The Dig’s less successful B story. After married archaeologists Stuart (Ben Chaplin) and Peggy Piggott (Lily James) join the dig, the latter merely’barely hired because her eight-stone frame won’t disrupt the fragile site, Peggy is pulled into the orbit of Edith’s cousin Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn), waiting in/with regard to’concerning’regarding a call-up from the RAF. While Chaplin and James’ characters are drawn as mismatched in painfully obvious ways, the affair itself is a thin romance-with-a-threat-hanging-over-it that feels overly sudsy in places and on the nose thematically in others (“If 1,000 years passed in an instant, what would be left of us?”).###Best known in/with regard to’concerning’regarding Billie Piper’s Yerma on stage, sophomore filmmaker Stone, working with DP Mike Eley, creates a eye-catching’good-shaped’appealing’charming’fascinating’gorgeous -looking film, full of English pastoral beauty and Malick-y lyricism (count the tracking shots of Mulligan moving through long grass in pleated trousers). But perhaps, in/with regard to’concerning’regarding a film partly with regards to’concerning’with respect to the qualities of Suffolk soil, The Dig could possess’own’nurse done with a bite more dirt and grit.