Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu (The Revenant) — Screenplay by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Nicolás Giacobone, and Sabina Berman.
It feels oddly appropriate that the final Warner Bros. release prior to the studio being acquired by Paramount Skydance is a major swing about world-ending crises and controlling the narrative, and starring one of the biggest movie stars from the last few decades in an unflattering part whilst covered in old-age make-up. Digger, from Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu, is a deeply fascinating film that is incredibly difficult to talk about without revealing the nature of the trick hidden up its sleeve. It’s also likely to be one of the most divisive films of the decade, because of how it feels designed to be both provocative and grating, for the purpose of establishing some of its points. It’s also a film best experienced without much foreknowledge of the goings-on in the film, and so I have done my utmost to write about the film and its ideas without spelling out the ‘trick’ and rather referring to it through references and the ideas it brings to the table.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger is a multi-layered tale that primarily follows its titular character, Digger Rockwell (played by Tom Cruise), an old oil magnate, who cares more about keeping his half-dead thirty-something-year-old cat, Maggie, alive than listening to the pleas of those concerned with the environment, which he is actively harming. After repeatedly ignoring those who said his oil extraction in Greenland was about to cause massive problems, Digger learns that his company’s activities (and his blasé attitude when presented with the risks) are responsible for a massive explosion that has dislodged a massive ice shelf that is now on its way to collide with Northern Europe, potentially resulting in massive tidal waves and likely killing thousands of people (and possibly more). Presented with potentially world-altering threats, President Compson (played by John Goodman) is more interested in listening to Digger’s proposal and his religious advisor than Dr. Nirav Ganesh (played by Riz Ahmed), the foremost expert on world safety available to the American decision-makers. Digger and the President hold on to the hope that the ice shelf will drift into the Atlantic Ocean and melt, even if they’re advised it is highly unlikely, and, in the event of utter catastrophe, their main idea is to try to control the narrative, with the American government planning for an information firewall built on an AI that can erase certain topics from online chatter.
Iñárritu is a filmmaker that I have had a complicated history with, as I tend to admire his films more than I, ultimately, like them. Although I was quite impressed with Birdman, I didn’t shower him with praise after The Revenant. Technically, it was remarkable, but it didn’t land as well with me as I had anticipated. Both those films were, however, largely embraced by the film world, and Digger is already lining itself up to be a much more divisive beast of a film. Here is a film that is deliberately provocative and button-pushing, and it is full of quirks that make it feel artificial. That artificiality, though it is not apparent from the marketing, is a key feature of the text. Digger is marketed as a satirical black comedy, but I think it is better described as a satire about satires, or perhaps more aptly, ‘a’ satire. The trick hidden inside of Iñárritu’s sleeve is one that will take many by surprise, and I think many will also find it compelling. Frankly, I also think the reveal of said trick — somewhere around the first twenty-to-thirty minutes, I’d guess — is well placed. Because when I watched the film, I was, honestly, gobsmacked in all the wrong ways by the first ten-to-fifteen minutes, which is largely what has been shown in trailers. I wasn’t surprised by its quirks in the opening, but I was surprised by how unfunny I found the opening to be.
When Iñárritu’s film reveals its second narrative layer, the film opens up and gradually reveals itself to be, to me, a fascinating film about not just controlling the narrative, as the trailers have implied, but actually the role of art and storytelling in collective memory. It is a film about a reality, not entirely unlike our own, but which is played for laughs and heightened in a certain way. It is a film that asks us to buy into the idea that sometimes the role of satire is to help process collective trauma and shape our memory of traumatic events, as illustrated by a secondary narrative. This next bit is perhaps getting dangerously close to revealing the nature of the spoiler, so if you haven’t seen it yet, then feel free to jump to the next paragraph. Watching Digger from our current perspective is the global ecological crisis version of watching a heightened satire — like, The Death of Stalin, Don’t Look Up, or Dr. Strangelove — from the perspective of someone actively living through the unnerving aspects of the era being satirized. If memory serves, Tom Cruise’s character, at one point, even blurts out something along the lines of, “it wasn’t funny to them,” and that is perhaps the part of the film that works best in the film’s secondary narrative layer. Because when the comedy doesn’t land — and the comedy is hit-and-miss — it almost feels like that’s the intent. All of that having been said, Iñárritu’s film isn’t subtle. It blurts its ideas right in your face, and it features plenty of loathsome characters not entirely dissimilar from people in our reality. Because of this, it is totally understandable why someone would absolutely not be able to get on the same wavelength that the filmmaker is trying to get you on.
Speaking from the perspective of the film craft on display, however, there can be no denying that it is showcasing film craft of the highest level. The production design — from Dennis Gassner and Richard Johnson — is simply extraordinary, especially as it dances on the line between believable excess and deliberate artificiality without ever going too far in one direction. There are heightened sound effects that work well. The music from Cosmo Sheldrake is distinctive, quirky, and additive. There’s also some impressive choreography on display, with parts of the set swirling around in real time, to properly communicate the energy and delusional button-pushing that the titular character is blabbering about in front of an incensed crowd. Speaking of the titular character, the prosthetics used to age up Cruise look convincing enough for the tonal balancing act.
And this really is Tom Cruise’s film. Although he definitely does turn in a good performance, it’s a multi-layered performance that is easy to appreciate but difficult to fall for. There’s an explosiveness to the character that Cruise is phenomenal at playing, and the aforementioned scene with him delivering a speech in front of a crowd that is frothing at the mouth in anger is his best work in the entire film. Although there are many supporting performances that just flat-out don’t work — largely because they’re not given the same multi-layered aspect — three performances do stand out. The best of those three is the performance delivered by Riz Ahmed. Ahmed’s environmentally conscious quasi-audience insert gets to say what we, as audience members, desperately need someone to shout. John Goodman is quite good as well, in his deliberately over-the-top performance as the cartoonish American President, who is very obviously referencing a certain someone from our reality, what with his large red tie, his ego-centric behavior, his billionaire advisors, and his faux-religious facade. Finally, though he only gets a small handful of scenes to flesh out his character, Jesse Plemons has a great scene that ties the whole thing together, as well as asks cynical, read-between-the-lines questions about the role of his type in art being allowed to exist.
The extent to which the film works or doesn’t work will be hotly contested all over the internet, but one thing that I feel pretty confident in saying doesn’t work is a certain daughter-centric subplot in the narrative’s second layer. It and the daughter character feel quite thinly drawn, and it feels like it is only present so as to inspire a crucial outburst from Cruise, which, however, does work. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger is a bold and challenging film that — as I was writing this review — I was still wrestling with to determine exactly how much I like it. Although it is certainly messy, it is also quite thought-provoking despite some of its simpler ideas. However, given that it’s something that I’ve thought about a lot earlier this year, the film’s complex focus on art in shaping collective memory and processing trauma is one that really spoke to me. So, I ultimately land on the side of ‘digging it,’ so to speak. In fact, while it’s not as accessible or as fun as most satires, I think this might be the film from the Mexican auteur that I’ve gotten the most out of on first viewing since Birdman.
8 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
