The film begins intriguingly enough with a woman arriving in Budapest expecting to meet her lover, who isn’t where she thought he would be. The lengthily titled Hungarian entry into the Academy Awards’ best foreign language film category, Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, offers a deep look into the complexities of the brain while including elements we expect in films: romance, mystery and eroticism. What goes on in the human brain? Surgeons operate on it philosophers speculate about its functions and psychologists try to penetrate its core. Despite this shortcoming, The Dig is a lovely, old-fashioned film, available on Netflix, that will provide a good restful evening’s entertainment. The Dig’s filmmakers are too polite to actually attack the unjust treatment of Brown and Pretty (and Lily James’s Peggy Preston) by Ken Stott’s Phillips, an ostentatious figurehead from the British Museum, who, of course, lands the artifacts and the glory for his famous institution. It may be said that the film provides its own dig, into the class system that still held Britain back in the days leading up to September 1939. Rather more interesting is the mentoring provided by Brown for Mrs. Just to reassure the producers and an audience always used to romance, Lily James plays a more conventional role: a badly neglected archaeologist who falls (at least briefly) for the charms of a handsome young cousin of Mrs. Much of the film’s drama is played out by Ralph Fiennes’ Brown and Carey Mulligan’s Pretty while observing all of the correct class conventions that divide them, their mutual respect and slowly flowering friendship provides the greatest emotional impact in the film. Basil Brown, a reserved, intelligent, working class and quietly rebellious man was resolutely put forth as the man deserving of accolades by the owner of the estate, Mrs. Such a discovery suddenly acquired national importance and part of The Dig deals with the impact on those who found it. Evidently, it was a burial ship for East Anglia royalty and a treasure trove of artifacts was unearthed, including (according to Wikipedia) “a suite of metalwork dress fittings in gold and gems, a ceremonial helmet, a shield and sword, a lyre and a silver plate from the Byzantine Empire.” During the initial excavation just before World War Two, an immense ship was found under a large mound on the Pretty estate in Suffolk. Not that Sutton Hoo’s main finding isn’t stunning to see. Kudos must go to director Simon Stone, author John Preston, scriptwriter Moira Buffini and the actors for creating something entertaining and enlightening about such an unfashionable tale. The Sutton Hoo story is certainly one to make pulses quicken among historians and lovers of Britain but it isn’t an obvious subject for a film. The problem-and the glorious thing-about The Dig is its subject, the discovery and initial excavation of the largest archaeological project in British history. It’s great that Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes and Lily James are cast in The Dig since they provide the mega wattage necessary to make the film palatable to a big audience. What sort of roles will she be offered in the next decade? Will they really suit the award winning actor? How hot does a woman have to be to continue as a star? No one is saying she’s too old for the part indeed, she’s too young. Now in The Dig, she’s cast as an aging aristocrat intent on finding an ancient ruin on her grounds. When Promising Young Woman was released at Christmas, she was snidely treated by one of Variety’s critics as not being “hot enough” to be that film’s feminist fatale. Case in point: Carey Mulligan, who played Scott Fitzgerald’s American dream girl Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby just eight years ago and has since made a huge impact on stage as a young woman being pursued by a former older employer in a remount of David Hare’s Skylight in London and Broadway. ![]() We’ve all heard how tough it is for women to be cast in films. Starring: Natasa Stork (Marta Vizy), Viktor Bodo (Janos Drexler), Benett Vilmmanyi (Alex), Zsolt Nagy (Krivan Barna), Peter Toth (Psychiatrist) Hungarian entry into Foreign Language Oscars Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time Starring: Carey Mulligan (Edith Pretty), Ralph Fiennes (Basil Brown), Lily James (Peggy Preston), Johnny Flynn (Rory Lomax), Ben Chaplin (Stuart Piggott), Ken Stott (Charles Phillips), Archie Barnes (Robert Pretty), Monica Dolan (May Brown) Moira Buffini, script based on John Preston’s book The Dig and Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Timeĭigging up artifacts and finding romance in unique locations
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