The Dig (2021)

Basil Brown: Well, I'm… I'm not untrained. I've been on dig since I was old enough to hold a trowel. My father taught me.

Edith Pretty: My interest in archaeology began like yours, when I was scarcely old enough to hold a trowel. My childhood home was built on a Cistercian convent. I helped my father excavate the apse.
Basil Brown: That speaks, don't it? The past.

Robert: Mr. Brown's been telling us all sorts of things. For instance, what's the most important part of an archaeologist's body?
Edith Pretty: I don't know.
Robert: His nose. If there's something there, he'll know it by the smell.

Basil Brown: That's a ship.
Edith Pretty: How do you mean, a ship?
Basil Brown: Oh, well, that's a ship that's been buried in the mound.
Robert: Why would anyone want to bury a ship?
Basil Brown: Well, I expect because that's a grave.
Robert: Whose grave?
Basil Brown: Well, I'd expect this is a grave of a… a great man. A warrior… or a king.

Basil Brown: They must have pulled his ship all the way up that there hill from the river. Now, they'd have put it on ropes, and they'd have hauled it over logs. Men, horses. It must have taken hundreds of 'em. I don't expect them to go to all this trouble for any little squirt. Can you imagine the send-off they'd be giving him? The songs they'd be singing.

Edith Pretty: The servants tell me you've studied everything, from Latin to geology.
Basil Brown: Well, a little education is a dangerous thing.

May Brown: You always told me your work isn't about the past or even the present. It's for the future. So that the next generations can know where they came from. The line that joins them to their forebears. Isn't that what you always say? Basil Brown: Yeah, something like that.
May Brown: Why else would the lot of you be playing in the dirt while the rest of the country prepares for war? Because that means something, innit? Something that'll last longer than whatever damn war we're heading into.

Charles Phillips: It's Dark Age, by Jupiter! Sixth century! This changes everything. These people were not just marauding barterers. They had culture! They had art! They had money!

Edith Pretty: Am I doing the right thing? It's someone's grave.
Basil Brown: No, that's… that's life what's revealed. And that's why we dig.

Rory Lomax: If 1,000 years… were to pass in an instant… what would be left of us?
Peggy Piggott: This. And parts of your watch. Torch. Fragments of the mug.
Rory Lomax: But every last scrap of you and I would… disappear.

Robert: When… When my father died… everyone said I had to look after my mother. And I failed. I failed.
Basil Brown: Robert… we all fail. Every day. There are some things we just can't succeed at… no matter how hard we try.

Edith Pretty: We die. We die and we decay. We don't live on.
Basil Brown: I'm not sure I agree. From the first human handprint on a cave wall… we're part of something continuous. So, we… don't really die.

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