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Digger is a highly polarizing absurdist disaster film/comedy about an
environmental apocalypse that has deeply divided audiences and film critics, who
tend to either love it or hate it. I found the critical responses a bit
exaggerated. I see it as neither terrible nor as one of the best films of the
year. I admire the boldness, originality, and wit of this difficult but
worthwhile film, but I like it more for what it is trying to do and its ambition
rather than its execution. Quite simply, the film takes many bold swings, but
not all of them work.
Unfortunately, the film has already been labeled as one of the year's biggest
box office flops, and it will probably end up with a very short theatrical run.
It cost close to 150 million to make, and the studio has spent 100 million
marketing it. But to date it has only earned just over 49 million dollars since its October 2
release, and it is expected to lose between 245 and 250 million dollars by the
time it ends its theatrical run.
The film was made by the gifted Mexican director, Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu.
He garnered tremendous acclaim and multiple Oscar nominations for his films, 21
Grams (2003),
Babel
(2006),
Birdman
(2014),
and
The Revenant
(2015)
. Along with
John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, he is one of the three filmmakers to win two
consecutive Best Director awards (for
Birdman and
The Revenant). In addition,
his virtual reality project about immigrants, Flesh and Sand (2017), received a
Special Achievement Award, and it was the only project of its kind to win an
Oscar.
But in my opinion, his finest film was his first one, Amores Perros (2000), a
brilliant nonlinear debut that tells three overlapping stories about dogs. I
thought the film, which was highly underrated, often matched Quentin Tarantino’s
nonlinear films, Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1997), in quality.
Digger gets its name from a shovel the main character displays on his
mantelpiece, which his grandfather used to find gold in Texas. This is how his
dad and his family first got rich.
The film stars Tom Cruise, one of the biggest box-office stars on the planet,
who has rarely impressed me, at least at first. He made his name as a feisty
go-getter with endless potential, backed by a competent older mentor. He played
similar roles over and over in films like Risky Business (1983), Top Gun (1985),
The Color of Money (1986), and Cocktail (1988). After a while, the formula
quickly got tiresome and predictable. His best films were the ones in which he
got out of his comfort zone and took risks under the guidance of great directors
like Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, and Paul Thomas Anderson. His most
memorable movies include Rain Man (1988), Born on the Fourth of July (1989),
Eyes Wide Shut (1986), Magnolia (1989), and Collateral (2002). His immensely
popular Mission: Impossible films were slick and competent but hardly
groundbreaking. But his Top Gun sequel,
Top Gun: Maverick
(2022), deepened the
main character and surprisingly was better than the original in every way.
In Digger, Tom Cruise, as the title character, is highly de-romanticized, and
he’s often shot unflatteringly. Cruise has a ridiculous, exaggerated, on-purpose
Southern accent, and he wears an ugly potbelly suit with a scraggly, ugly
comb-over with grey hair. This is one of Cruise’s most daring and audacious
roles, and he gives one of the year’s most unforgettable performances (and I
never thought I would ever be saying that about Cruise), but for once he's better
than the film. But the film, which was an early Oscar favorite, probably did too
poorly to get many Oscar nods.
The film co-stars John Goodman as the despicable, barely sane U.S. President who
always wears a red tie, as Trump does at times. He is so unstable he often makes
the current president look well adjusted. Goodman, of course, made his big name
on Rosanne (1988-97). But the series refused to stay dead, and he reprised the
character in a 2018 revival and the successful spin-off The Connors (2018-2025).
But arguably his best work came in the Coen brothers’ films: Barton Fink (1987),
The Big Lebowski (1997), and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (1999). His wonderful,
over-the-top performance in Digger approaches his best work.
Early in the film, the camera takes us on a tour of Digger’s estate, and the
scenes are immeasurably improved by the crisp, engaging cinematography of
Emmanuel Lubezki. The mansion makes its owner look terrible, and it chronicles
Digger’s seemingly endless offenses against nature. He has antlers and furs all over the
mansion, souvenirs of his hunting excursions. Digger seems to like animals a
lot, but he likes them best dead. The viewers might also be surprised that the
curtains resemble ruffled drapes like the ones you would see in a play. A detail
which will make sense after a while, trust me.
A terrible day is coming that Digger dreads, and the situation echoes Chornobyl.
Digger has disrespected the earth continuously and ignored warnings about the
environmental catastrophes that would happen because of his business practices.
Now he has run out of time. A methane leak on one of his oil platforms caused an
explosion that ripped a huge chunk of ice from Greenland. Now the huge piece of
ice, which is many times the size of Washington, D.C., is floating towards
Europe, which is expected to end millions of lives, and it’s all Digger’s fault.
Perhaps the most sympathetic character, Dr. Garnesh (well played by Sound of
Metal’s Riz Ahmed) is an environmental advisor who works for Digger and advises
him. He seems to be the only humanistic character with a conscience in this
whole reality. He warns that the disaster might cause even more serious
consequences than expected because the broken-off parts of the glacier contain
both nuclear waste and hazardous viral organisms that could cause epidemics.
All this culminates in a brilliant speech in which Digger cleverly turns the
tables. Rather than directly admitting his specific culpability, he attacks the
global capital system, which depends on fossil fuels, and the inevitability of
an outcome like this. He says: “Oil is what we have, what God gave us. You
demand, and I supply.” In this scene, Cruise, who is almost unrecognizable, is
transformed into one of the great snake oil salesmen who is largely despicable
but mesmerizing because of the sheer power of his charisma. Although much of the crowd still hold him responsible, his speech is clearly at least
partially successful.
The cabinet is filled with religious fanatics who pray that the world will end
so they can presumably quickly ascend to heaven, and they are extremely eager to
use the nuclear option. The pastor obscenely shows more regret over lost profit
than lost lives. This is obviously a dig at right-wing evangelicals and
Christian nationalists.
The broader political parody, unlike Dr. Strangelove, which clearly influenced
it, is a bit overdone. It gets repetitive, drags on, and gets tiresome after a
while. Although the film is mostly successful, it gets slow in the last half
hour, and I expected, and I wanted, the film to end several times.
So, Digger is a very flawed, partially successful experiment that earns points
for its boldness and originality. It does not deserve its fate as the year’s
biggest box office bomb, and like Blade Runner and the Adventures of Buckaroo
Banzai, this weird film hopefully will gain an audience on streaming or DVD.
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