Digger - Review

Rating: 4 out of 5

TOM Cruise’s return to serious acting not only suffered at the hands of critics but also looks set to become one of the biggest box office bombs of all time (following a global opening of $20 million on a budget reported to be in excess of $125 and $180 million).

But does that make it a bad film? I would argue not.

Co-written and directed by Alejandro G Iñárritu, who has previously enjoyed Oscar winning success with The Revenant and Birdman, Digger is actually - in my humble opinion - a clever, provocative and wildly enjoyable film that has something highly relevant to say.

It confronts hot button issues yet also asks wider questions of just about everyone. And it offers no easy answers, exposing the hypocrisy of modern living in many ways, as well as the ease with which people are duped into apathy.

Ahead of its release, critics were asked not to reveal some of the film’s biggest secrets, even though they lamented the ways in which it didn’t work. But while I can see how some of the film’s plot devices can lead to accusations of pretentiousness, I also felt that it added an extra layer of irony and depth.

Hence, as the film starts, Cruise appears to be playing foul-mouthed, pot-bellied, ultra rich oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, who suddenly finds himself tasked with saving the world after failing to heed warnings on climate change, as one of his oil rigs explodes in Greenland, prompting an enormous glacier to head towards Europe and climate catastrophe.

But here’s the reveal (spoilers ahead). Cruise is actually playing Curtis Markson, an actor who is portraying Digger in a satirical play decades after the actual disaster occurred, where people are now living in the new reality caused by climate meltdown.

The ensuing film divides its time between the actual play, which offers an absurdist take on the real events that occurred, and the events surrounding the mounting of the play itself - which offer both insight into the new state of the world as well as the role of art - and by extension audiences - in shaping the relevant discourse and protest around key events.

Those who have criticised the film will doubtless cheer that it has, perhaps, fallen on its own sword: a victim of at least one of its prophecies regarding apathy and lack of engagement with anything pressing or serious.

But that’s kind of missing the point and allowing the real-life bad guys to win… those powerful men who drive and create the narratives that achieve their capitalistic objectives.

Digger is, in many ways, one of the most important and necessary films of the moment and another irony would be if it met the same kind of fate as the play (Fossil Fools) it depicts: only really being seen, valued and even cheered once it’s too late.

And however you may feel about some of the film’s more ‘artsy’ flights of fancy, there’s no denying it has plenty to say and isn’t afraid to do so.

Both Cruise’s Digger and John Goodman’s ageing, misogynistic US President are firmly aimed at Donald Trump and his acolytes. There’s no subtlety - and there doesn’t need to be. You could even make a case for arguing that the exaggerated versions of the characters being portrayed aren’t even that exaggerated given Trump’s bullish dismissal of the cold, hard truths surrounding climate change and his outrageous meltdowns.

The film confronts the perception of fact v storytelling. For those who control the narrative, the facts don’t matter. Or as one character puts it: “Words are perception. And perception is reality.”

Hence, while Iñárritu paints Digger and his cronies as the villains, they themselves seek to divert and distract or create their own fall guys… declaring Mother Nature as the real villain (Goodman’s gung-ho commander in chief would rather “blow that frozen cunt up”, when referring to the iceberg) and pointing their fingers back at the general population in order to recast themselves in a more positive light.

In one of the film’s biggest set piece moments, Digger goes before the UN (or some such equivalent) and delivers a speech for the ages: one that aims to expose the hypocrisy of everyone who continues to rely on oil to facilitate their comfortable lives (their car journeys, their holidays, their “two-day delivery of shit you don’t need”), or worse… buy shares in oil companies to facilitate their own wealth. As Digger declares: “You want freedom to live your unsustainable lives!”

It’s an interesting point. But one that someone in Digger’s position would most likely make with their back against the wall. It deflects by virtue of its relationship to the ‘truth’… there are those who would find it difficult to make the drastic switch to clean energy that’s needed, but equally there are many for whom the currently high costs of converting to renewable energy make doing the right thing impossible (even affordable schemes involve some form of repayment style mortgage plan).

Iñárritu doesn’t delve that deep into the alternatives and such arguments. His film is content to stick and twist the knife into those who are complicit in the existential threat posed by climate change… for them, the facts pose an inconvenient truth (just ask Al Gore).

But his film does delve further into the tactics of misinformation and division that are currently being employed by those deniers, the pro-oil camp and those right wing politicians facilitating the status quo.

When Riz Ahmed’s scientific expert lays out the facts, for example, he’s quickly shot down. His ethnicity is made a problem (“where are you from?” asks a general, menacingly). The colour of his skin and the origins of his family ‘excluding’ him from being truly American [and on board with the agenda]. Again, Digger feels hauntingly relevant. It’s holding up a mirror to the world in which we now live, where nationality and race is weaponised and vilified to push the corporate agenda.

Digger offers up a set of tyrants who are, quite frankly, beyond redemption. Hence, the cheering at their demise.

Cruise’s take on Digger has been compared to his similarly outrageous turn as Len Grossman in Tropic Thunder - but where that one was played for sheer comedic value, this one has much greater levels of monstrosity.

He is a man who cares more about his cat than anything else… save maybe for the expensive infrastructure his company invests in. His primary concern, post oil rig explosion, is for the equipment rather than the men. And while he adores his cat, the rest of his home is stacked full of animals he has had killed and mounted on his walls (from rhinos and polar bears to stags and crocodiles).

He exists to consume all before him. His reach is all-consuming. His disdain for humanity terrifying.

Cruise’s performance as Digger is potty mouthed and larger than life. But he doesn’t seek to offer much in the way of understanding. Digger is a product of the corporate machine his family has been serving for years.

The performance he provides for Curtis Markson is only marginally more amenable - an actor prone to questioning his script and ranting. But this, in turn, questions the integrity of the art he is serving. Does turning Digger into a pantomime villain, for instance, make it too easy for audiences to hate him rather than trying to understand his motivations and understand his rise (and how it went unchecked)? It’s noted, for example, that the ‘real’ Digger was a “composed, frightening, seductive psychopath”.

In making the play’s Digger more outwardly entertaining for audiences, has art diluted the reality? Should it be more probing? More direct? Especially at a time when creativity itself is under threat from those it may seek to question (it is a family relative of the late Digger who has provided funding for the play, after all... atonement or deflection)?

Iñárritu’s film is both direct and entertaining. It’s chilling yet satirical. Comparisons have been made with the Stanley Kubrick classic Doctor Strangelove and they’re certainly appropriate.

But there’s also an urgency to it that feels angry when set against the ongoing context of extreme weather events across the globe. And it deserves to find a much wider audience than it currently has.

Indeed, the world needs more movies that are prepared to probe and to push back against the misinformation and apathy that may otherwise accelerate our downfall.

Digger is far from perfect. Several characters (such as Sandra Huller’s sister, and Michael Stuhlbarg’s vice President) don’t feel fleshed out. Certain ideas (AI is only briefly mentioned) aren’t fully formed - although it's good that it gets a mention. And the marketing strategy feels woefully wrong in the way that it both misdirects audiences and places too much emphasis on Cruise as its leading man. It’s also difficult to see where all of the film’s giant budget actually went (does a film about the need to protect resources really need to have cost this much, especially when so much of it feels stagey and is confined to singular locations with no big set piece spectacles?).

But it hits many more times than it misses - which is no mean feat for a film that takes as many swings as it does. I, for one, dug what it had to say.