Movie: Excavation
Genre: Plot, Biography, History
Director: Simon Stone
Writers: Mora Pavni, John Preston
Starring: Kerry Mulligan, Ralph Finnes
Release Date: January 29, 2021 (UK)
Awards: Top 10 Films of the Year at the 21st Phoenix Film Critics Association Awards
Many quality movies have a small audience for various reasons, and are even destined to be appreciated only by those who understand it. Where does the value criterion for the little-known but "excellent" name come from, and can these minorities convince the majority to prove its excellence? The truth in the hands of a few is not the same as the truth in the hands of the majority, because truth is conditional and applicable, and these premises are enough for all kinds of people to make a full fuss and argue endlessly.
The above is the thinking process of seeing niche quality films in an instant.
Excavation is an archaeologicalLyphatelic British film based on the novel of the same name. It tells the story of Mrs. Preetty, the widow of an officer in the village of Sutton Hoo on the east coast of England, in 1939, who hires Mr. Brown, an archaeologist from a farmer's background, to excavate the mounds in his estate. Mr. and Mrs. Preti have a high level of archaeological expertise, she found that these tombs have been seriously excavated, and after the excavation began, they did not attract the attention of the people around them, not knowing that this archaeological excavation was about to become one of the "world's top ten ancient tombs and rare treasures".
In the absence of large mechanical tools, Mr. Brown was almost buried alive during the excavations, and repeatedly braved the rain to cover the excavation site. Mr. Brown and his assistants dug out a rivet and then a large wooden ship, which is believed to be a boat from the Time of The Yangelu-Saxons (usually referring to the Norman Conquest of Great Britain) period, a royal cemetery, in the form of Scandinavian burials, and a large number of exquisite funerary objects such as gold helmets were found, which filled the gap in British history.
The fatal attraction of this film is the sense of picture, the sense of story, and the sense of clarity. The gray-blue sky, stratus clouds, connected to the horizon not far away, the wild grasses growing everywhere with the gentle undulating terrain, the particles of the soil are enough to hide the secrets of time and space, until the distant trees stitch the heavens and the earth, like dark green threads, indicating that the wilderness will end, and when people run to it, they will fall straight from here to the deep cliffs, or fish jump into the sky. Here, the body and mind are extremely expanded, filling the illusion of the heavenly circle, a lonely and elegant woman with aristocratic legacy wanders with the wind, the wind and clouds will break the curse of time, to win the victory of softness, and meet the historical truth unexpectedly.
This woman, Mrs. Preti, tried to face everything with tenacity and silence, but she was plagued by chronic diseases, and she could only bring the hand of fate to the door, but could not hold it tightly. The local museum director brought the so-called British Museum personnel to take over the excavations, and there was an academic argument with Mr. Brown, who wanted to swallow all the results. The war could begin at any moment, and with Mrs. Brown's encouragement and mrs. Pletti's son, the ostracized Mr. Brown continued to participate in the excavations.
In the film, Mrs. Preti and Mr. Brown have a love affair, perhaps like-minded and sympathetic, but the married Mr. Brown asks Mrs. Preti to stay on the word "employment", and her life does not give her more time to choose a new life, and she is forced to leave hope to those who come after her like a tomb keeper. The Pigots invited by the archaeological team to sleep together, because Pigot is more interested in male colleagues, and the young wife Peggy decides to be herself back, ending the short marriage and welcoming a new love.
The significance of archaeological work lies in excavating history, in resurrecting the once vivid life course, so that future generations know where they came from, and the country and the nation can have a deeper connotation. Mrs Pritty decided to donate all the artifacts to the British Museum so that more people could enjoy them freely.
This story has a major historical background, that is, World War II, many countries in the world are facing severe tests. In order to protect the artifacts, Mrs. Preti and Mr. Brown and others reburied the archaeological site. Others decided to fight to defend national sovereignty, and Mrs. Preti's cousin Roy joined the Air Force directly, from the archaeological site to the battlefield. Almost in the same period, the cultural relics of China's Palace Museum were also carefully packed and stepped on the train to the south, turning the country around the country and avoiding war, and many cultural relics workers were forced to live a life of perennial displacement, in order to preserve the essence of the nation's blood and wisdom genes.
This is a story based on real events, so each character is given meaning, and the calm restraint between their eyebrows and the emotional outpouring of clear determination are intertwined, making the sense of story very strong, and it is a free imagination based on reality. The film is emotionally fluent and full of energy, but the profundity is insufficient, the title is called "excavation", and it does not unearth the connotation of the story that is really painful and has a long aftertaste.
At the end of the article, which needs to echo the beginning, Mr. Brown's contribution to the excavations at the Sutton Hoo site in real events has only been recognized in recent years, and the female archaeologists involved in the excavations at that time deserve to be named. It seems that a person's value still needs the certification of the group to be truly valuable, otherwise it will be obliterated in history, and such a thing is continuing consciously or unconsciously, for tens of thousands of years.