In 1922, when archaeologist Howard Carter stepped into Tutankhamun’s tomb, he looked at the handprints on the cave wall from three thousand years ago and exclaimed: “Time has lost its meaning.”
More than a decade later, in Sackfordshire, England, in front of the raised mounds on the bleak grass, a pair of men and women from different classes used Carter's words as a signal, tacitly establishing their common passion for archaeology. In the soil under their feet, lies an Anglo-Saxon ship coffin-the Sutton Hood ship tomb known as "one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the history of Britain."
The archaeological film "Excavations" recently launched on Netflix is adapted from the novel of the same name by the British writer John Preston. It retells the excavation process of the Sutton Hu Ship Tomb with implicit poetic brushwork and the perspective of the characters.
Before the outbreak of World War II, Basol Brown, a farmer-born excavator, was hired by the officer’s widow Edith Pretti to excavate several mysterious mounds on her estate. As the scum that buried history was swept away layer by layer, more and more people came to Bassoer, including Edith’s beloved youngest son Robert, her cousin Roy, who is about to join the Air Force, and a team of British soldiers. The archaeological expert who took over the project in the name of the museum.
In the wind and rain that the war is about to come, people from different positions are digging for history and vying for history, using a decadent and immortal ancient ship as a mirror to observe the ultimate meaning of time and life and death, and finally leave beyond the flesh on the bank of history. , An indelible mark.
Although "Excavation" restores the work process of archaeologists in detail, and spends a lot of time discussing the power struggle and political factors behind the archaeological project, this significant excavation process itself is not the focus of the film. On a natural stage composed of soil pits and wooden boards, actors and actresses come and go, and only time is the eternal protagonist who never ends.
From the perspective of the overall narrative structure of the film, the time in "Excavation" flows forward slowly and linearly. The film is fascinated by the gradual nature brought about by time. As the excavation progresses, the heavy footsteps of war gradually sounded on the radio and on the street. The steps are pressing. The wide-open shots of the world and the earth are slowly drawn closer, until the characters' faces are the most forbearing. The subtle expression changes are extremely clear.
Perhaps when director Simon Stone and screenwriter Mora Buffney choose a fictional novel with multiple narrative perspectives as the original material of the film, "Excavation" is destined to be a group portrait work that focuses on digging out characters rather than restoring historical facts. .
"Excavation" is the story of Edith and Basol. Her life and dreams have been eaten away by her family responsibilities. He was not recognized by the academic circle because of his academic background, but in the last quiet corner before the war, two archaeological People on the margins of the world respect and trust each other, and together they hold fast to the splendid legacy of the dead thousands of years ago;
"Excavation" is the story of Robert. Faced with his mother’s illness and his uncle’s enlistment, a child who is obsessed with the future and the universe has to be trapped in the present, receiving a profound death education on the ancient ruins, and accepting that there is always something in history. The fact of the loser;
"Excavation" is also the story of an archaeologist couple Peggy and Stewart. In a fleeting life, a wrongly married couple finally bravely broke free from an oppressive and loveless marriage and rediscovered the possibility of love and freedom.
With the slow and restrained rhythm of the movie, the wind of time gradually blows away the fine sand, and the individual's emotional struggle and the traces of existence left behind are like broken gold buried in the sand, slowly revealing and shining slowly.
However, from the point of view of the editing techniques of some segments of the film, the time shown in "Excavation" is at the same time fragmented, blurry, and nonlinear. The director repeatedly used asynchrony of audio and video and cross-editing to create a dreamy sense of dissociation. The sequence of adjacent scenes was shuffled and changed, and the characters on the screen were silent and freely speaking.
In the first half of the film, the two protagonists, Edith and Bassoer, are the main targets of "fooling" the sound and picture are out of sync. When Basol was smoking a pipe silently in front of the grass, in the background the maid and Edith were eagerly talking about the self-taught amateur expert in front of the vanity mirror. Edith put on a velvet lace skirt and was in Basol Glancing at him as he passed the window.
When Bassoer's wife came to visit, the leader of the picture and the object being talked about in the background sound reversed their positions. In the same vanity mirror and the same window, Edith, who saw the Bassor couple walking arm in arm, was meditating for a long time, and in the voice track, Bassor’s wife was giving praise to this generous employer, which made it even more so. Subtle loneliness. Through such implicit symmetry, the film only uses a few strokes to hint at the unsynchronized and early end of the soft sentiment between Edith and Bassor.
In the second half of the movie, when more characters enter the story, the manipulated time connects the past, the present and the future, juxtaposing passion and death, mixing a touch of lost sadness into the childlike fantasy, and finally creating A grand and feeble sense of destiny.
On the night Roy picked up the body of the crashed pilot from a nearby river, he sat by the campfire, touched the historic gold coin on the chest of his rare lover, and asked: "After a thousand years, what will we have left? "At the same time, Robert was lying on the bed in the small room where the planet model was hung. He just witnessed his death. He couldn't help worrying about his cousin who was about to become a pilot. He could only repeatedly ask his mother who was also worried: "Roy won't Dead, right?" The past of the unfortunate pilot overlapped with Roy's future at this moment.
And one night when the story was about to end, Robert took his seriously ill mother down to the bottom of the pit, using the ship-shaped ancient coffin as a spaceship, sailing towards the immortal sky. At this time, an announcement came from the kitchen radio that Britain declared war on Germany. The distant future of the 25th century that the child said was buried by the terrible future that was close at hand.
The linear and non-linear processing of time gives "Excavation" a layer of hazy philosophical thinking, and also gives the characters in the film a duality. Each character is not only a mayfly in the torrent of time, but also an absolute in their personal story. main character.
The handprints on the cave wall, the gold coins between the lovers’ necks, the joyful photos, the suitcases with names, the soil knowledge taught by the parents, the memories of love... When the tide of time rises, all traces of life are It was buried until it was discovered again someday in the future. At that time, time will lose its meaning again, and the fragile and perishable little human beings will usher in immortality that transcends time.
(This article was first published on the "Global Screen" public account)
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