Sepia-toned escapism... and no phones
THE last film I saw at the cinema was the brilliant Sam Mendes directed 1917, filmed – in what looks like one amazing continuous shot – by our very own Torbay-born Oscar winner Roger Deakins. It brings the First World War to life in a whole new way.
That was in January last year, just before the pandemic struck and cinemas were shut. So the most recent film I saw, at the weekend, was of course, on television. Along with the family, work, and walking the dog, TV has helped hugely to offset the boredom and anxiety of lockdown.
My daughter, who moved back from London a couple of years ago, brought her Netflix subscription with her and so, on Saturday, we all sat down to watch the film of the moment, The Dig.
Even if you haven’t seen it, you are probably aware that it tells the story of excavator Basil Brown, who dug into a mound of earth on a Suffolk widow’s land and found one of the greatest archeological treasures ever discovered in Britain, the Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon burial ship and its haul of treasure.
Like a lot of the best TV and film drama I have enjoyed during the pandemic, it was set in the past. In this case, Britain in 1939 on the eve of war. The symbolism of finding an iconic representation of England, probably the burial site of an AngloSaxon king, as Britain faces invasion from a foreign foe won’t have been lost on film-makers or audiences.
At one time, anything loosely termed “costume drama” or out of the Merchant Ivory school of filmmaking would have had me scrabbling for the remote. Now I can happily settle down for a couple of hours and be transported back in time.
The quality of film-making – we can all now talk knowingly about “high production values” – has been a big factor in the appeal of period drama. But there is another one that came to me as I watched The Dig.
Drama, I concluded, in a blinding flash of the blooming obvious, is much better without digital technology. Not the digital technology to deliver the movie to the TV, of course, but the digital technology that we all now take for granted and which the characters in films like The
Dig are managing quite happily without.
One scene springs to mind, when Brown – brilliantly played by Ralph Fiennes, surely in line for a Bafta nomination – needs to urgently inform his employer, the burial mound’s landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan), of an important find from his excavations.
He climbs on his bicycle, half a ton of finest British steel with a front headlamp that could double as a searchlight to pick out German bombers, pedals furiously up to Mrs Pretty’s house, where he raps on the door, awakening the butler. The butler then has to don his tail coat, open the creaking door, grimace, tell Brown he should leave it until the morning, then stomp off to alert his mistress to the caller. Eventually – after several minutes of beautiful acting, finely shot scenes and a tense development in the plot, the message is passed on and the action proceeds.
What would a modern day Brown have done? Dropped his shovel, dipped his hand into his pocket and sent Mrs Pretty a quick text or WhatsApp message. How dreary.
In another scene, Mrs Pretty’s nine-year-old son Robert, who has taken to Brown and fears he is leaving the job, takes his own bicycle on another furious ride across the Suffolk countryside to find him at his cottage. No need to stay home to save lives, then. The boy’s disappearance sparks panic back at the big house. Cue chauffeur, who climbs into a fabulous old car and drives Mrs Pretty across the countryside to find her son. In the 21st century, she’d simply have called Robert on his mobile and told him get home, sharpish.
There may be film-watchers who love what the digital age can bring to movie-making. I’d rather see pipesmoking chaps in tweeds watching Spitfires overhead before getting back to their labours. And if they have an important message to send, deliver it themselves in person. Escapism has become essential in lockdown. I prefer to take mine sepia-toned from the history books. And definitely without phones.
Anything termed ‘costume drama’ once had me scrabbling for the TV remote