I was excited to see a film that portrays 1930's England, and Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan are proven actors that bring a unique presence to their films. Archeology might be a tough sell for the premise of a film and it was these actors that drew me in. The first half gets it so right, it's just about the time period and characters digging while becoming excited as they unearth the past, it's rather simple yet these actors have no trouble keeping you interested. In fact it was refreshing to see English people presented on screen becoming excited over finding evidence of their ancestors and past to this ancient land given the current hostile attitude towards the English and Celtic peoples by particular political groups and media companies who like to remind us we have little culture and heritage.
Then suddenly it's as if the writers thought viewers would become bored and in comes a new character, a rather modern-behaving "liberated" female with her controlling husband, inserted into the plot to remind us how women should really behave in the current age as if we needed reminding. The key characters become background noise, and you have this love triangle develop, the film takes on a different purpose, I'd rather see more character development between the man who discovered the relics and the museum trying to take credit from the little man.
