The Dig

It's an intimate film that moves at the deliberate, careful pace of an excavation and, in so doing, uncovers a few gems along the way.

"The Dig" is not a film for armchair archaeologists. It is more of a diversion for viewers looking for handsomely mounted period British melodrama.

"The Dig" is about the yearning, so human and, yes, so elusive and so futile, to fix the past so that it can be preserved.

Delivers strong performances - from Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan in particular - and top-level craft, but with an undercurrent of real emotion which sensitively conveys the fragility of lives and time.

It rather poetically places the turbulence of the then-present conflict within the perspective of the millennia of human experience that have come before.

The line it draws between the earthy and the ethereal stays with you: it's a well-timed double dose of consolation and escape.

Strong performances and an empathetic adapted script from Moira Buffini mines the spirit of discovery in spite of bureaucracy and other various human foibles.

Though rather conventional, and indoctrinated with its fair share of distracting subplots, there's a light sensitivity in "The Dig" worth exploring.

uses the events surrounding what has been called the 'British Tutankhamun' as a reflection on the evolving cycle of humankind by accentuating sex and death...in what might be considered a top notch 'Masterpiece' production.

The film is charming and difficult to fault too much. It's just nothing special, so one isn't inclined to shout its praises from the rooftop. Watch it with mammy or granny and all will be content.