Digger
★★★½
About an hour into the film – which took place in a Parliament-like courtroom – the screen shut off and the lights turned on in the theater. It wouldn’t be for a long half-hour that things would be up and running again, but it allowed me to really think about what went on up to that point. And up to that point, I wasn’t really vibing with it, especially when a quarter-of-the-way plot twist threw everything about this film off balance. But during the second half of the film, almost everything came into perspective. When I left the theater after the definitive end, I thought this was ultimately a wild swing and a surprising hit.
Digger is the new film from iconic Mexican auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu, starring Tom Cruise as the titular character. Other stars include John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons and Michael Stuhlbarg. Digger follows the eponymous Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon among the most powerful men in the world, tasked with saving the world from a disaster of his own doing. As of the writing of this review, the film is the final one to be released by Warner Brothers before Paramount/Skydance acquires the studio.
Firstly, I would like to discuss some audio/visual aspects about Digger before diving into the narrative, the potatoes before the meat if you will. The production design for starters is lavish and helps convey more subtle characteristics about this world and its characters (case in point, Digger’s mansion). Cosmo Sheldrake’s score (his debut as a film composer) is a very unorthodox cacophony of offbeat winds and blaring brass, but in a way that conjuncts the film’s zany tone. The cinematography is additionally gorgeous, utilizing long takes and low-angle shots to a relatively meaningful degree (which is something both Iñárritu and frequent collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki excel at).
Furthermore, to say Cruise understood the assignment is an understatement. He fully leans into the exaggerated weirdness of Digger as a satirical character. With all the action blockbusters he’s been in over the past decade, it’s easy to forget that Cruise can be a bonafide actor; there are plenty of moments in just this one film that give him the chance to shine as one. Goodman and Ahmed (who play the president and a scientist, respectively) are also acting highlights in this film who are just as on board with the farcical angle.
Speaking of which, onto the actual meat. There are two plots the film juggles, one of which I cannot fully explore without spoiling it, so I will give a warning when I discuss that one.
At a passing glance, the first plot is a very on-the-nose satire about the corrupt businessmen and leaders ruining the world for profit who babble away all the dangers they are causing (hell, the film’s original title was “Blah, Blah, Blah”). The overall joke with this plot is on these guys, exaggerating their indifferences and other negative traits to a comical degree, and I think it’s interesting for the most part. However, it’s also filled with talkative dialogue that more often than not overlaps with each other, so much so that it becomes easy to tune it out. On a more subjective note, the most its jokes got out of me were nose exhales albeit some instances (some of which involved Stuhlbarg as a dopey vice president) that made me laugh out loud.
SPOILERS
The second plot of Digger starts with the aforementioned twist: the story of Digger is actually a farcical stage play in rehearsal aptly titled Fossil Fools. This is where the film takes a very Birdman-like approach, showing its lead actor at a personal crossroads with the exaggerated character he’s playing and his reality. This twist at first, again, throws everything off balance and leaves you wondering “What does this have to do with anything?” but at a certain point (about 90 minutes in), everything becomes a little clearer. This plot deconstructs what satire ultimately means not just to the creatives working on it, but to the audience watching it. The audience in the film watch an entertaining portrait of the man who ruined the world with climate change and natural disasters the same way people in real life do with political figures, and at the end of the show we return to the fucked up reality by said figures. In short, the joke is on us and a rather clever one at that. I liked this a little more than the story within the story, although it still is imperfect; there are bits of dialogue that are quite blunt as well as a daughter subplot that I didn’t care about.
END OF SPOILERS
In conclusion, Digger is one of the most divisive films of the year, but personally I lean towards the group that relatively enjoyed it. A good but not quite great satire on the people destroying the environment and frankly, the idea of farce itself. Who knows, maybe this will better with age.
