Big swings are something of a rarity in this day and age. In these times of fluctuating box office and studio buy-outs, the idea of taking tonal and narrative risks are coming exceedingly rare as money men grow incredibly anxious about seeing a return on their investment. Well, it seems that no one told Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who wades into the box office maelstrom with Digger, a caustic, shouty, anti-comedy that alternates big, unsubtle performances with teeth-jarring tonal shifts and some increasingly depressing themes. Hoping to shield the film from any financial issues is the fact that Tom Cruise is very much front and centre, swathed in old age make up and overacting a storm while he clunks about the place in cowboy boots as the titular oil magnate. However, to really dig under the surface of Digger, we’re going to have to drill into some major spoiler territory straight from the off – can this frenetic mix of Dr. Strangelove and Birdman manage to escape the prediction that this disaster movie is an actual disaster?
Digger Rockwell is an aging, old-school, oil tycoon who may just be one of the most powerful men on earth; but while he obsesses of the ailing health of his fifteen year-old cat, Maggie, massive global upheavals have been set in motion after years of drilling for oil in Alaska and Greenland has caused a methane pocket under one such area to explode and cause an ice shelf the size of Maryland to dislodge and float off for a collision course with Europe. What makes this ecological disaster even more damnning is that Digger and his family knew about the methane risks and went ahead with it anyway due to the huge demand for oil.
The next thing you know, we have panicked scientists such as Dr. Nirav Ganesh desperately trying to get all involved to recognise the severity of the event while ailing U.S. President Compson and his floundering government suggest destroying the ice shelf with nukes. As the world goverments go into an uproar and Digger is called to answer for his highly dubious methods, the old sod tries to think of ways to deflect blame and even float suggestions of somehow respinning the narrative in a way that makes him out to be some kind of potential savior. However, when a second ice shelf that’s even bigger than the first suddenly detatches itself and heads toward Alaska, can even the might of Digger’s bullshit and America’s nuclear arsenal be enough to avert a potential cataclysm?
However, there’s actually more going on here than meets the eye. You see, there’s a reason why everything we’re watching is to exaggerated and overblown, and it leads to something that’s just as disturbing as an upcoming ecological disaster: this is actually the world trying to come to terms with something that’s actually happened.in the most exaggerated way possible.
Before we go any further, I have to say that I’m impressed that anyone would spend such a large amount of money on a film that’s immediately set to be cinematic marmite. Regardless of the fact that the entire film has been sold on the gambit of seeing Cruise do full, crazed comedy for the first time since playing the Ludricris dancing Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, Digger is a film that’s a bizarre sell, especially once we plough even deeper and latch onto the meta aspects of a truly strange script. When I said that Digger was a split of the apocalyptic farce of Stanley Krubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and the rigours of creating serious art from Iñárritu’s own Birdman, I meant it, because a sudden, extreme, plot twist audaciously reveals that Digger is actually a stage play being enacted by a stressed troupe that’s experiencing troubles due to an over-stressed star weathering some personal issues. This, twinned with the fact that the show, “Fossil Fools”, is a grotesquely exaggerated account of true events means that Digger isn’t going to be for everyone, especially when it’s seemingly deliberately looking to spectacularly disappear up it’s own arse.
Obviously, the film is taking massive pot shots at the impossibly rich figures that are picking apart our very planet to match our ravenous hunger for energy in other to drive our cars, fly in planes and use the internet to read movie reviews on lesser know web pages *nervously looks around*. But on top of that, Iñárritu also seems to be using the sobering pull backs into reality to make even more bold, but depressing, announcements. For a start, the film seems to be brazenly satiring satire itself, having its leads give monstrously unsubtle performances only for the tone to suddenly sober up and critique itself for being too silly. It’s almost like the film is saying that the artform is dead, because life has gotten too bizarre to satirise and once we get to the cheerfully downbeat ending, he’s even going as far to say that it’s not even doing any good, and is only effective in giving catharsis in the aftermath.
As much as this will confuse and confound some people – make no mistake, Digger is a very irritating and obnoxious film by design – you have to admire the balls of everyone involved who got this film made. The performances are stunning, with Cruise unsurprisingly going all in, supercharged by taking cinematic risks that don’t require him to dangle from helicopters or sprint for three minutes straight. Alternating between a histrionic character that makes the cast of a Coen Brothers farce seem like they’ve come a Scandinavian arthouse film, and a distracted actor, Cruise is sublime, energetically bellowing his way through long takes one minute, then switching to intimate and human the next. In comparison, the rest of the cast impressively keep up – both John Goodman’s cadaverous president and Riz Ahmed’s highly stressed scientist attack their performances with such ferocious, ridiculous energy, it’s like they’ve become actual human muppets – and over in the “real world” we find Jesse Plemons playing yet another strange oddball with a touching secret.
Of course, Digger seems destined to be a film that’s not going to be properly judged on its merits until some significant time has passed – which only really goes to prove Iñárritu’s point even further, I guess. That’s not to say Digger is some flawless pieces of insightful comedy as some of its wild flailing does seem especially unfocused for the man who made The Revenant. But then, seeing as the film frequently makes the point of satirising the fact that satire may no longer be effective as a deterrent and can only act as an emotional balm, Digger makes its mark fairly clearly – box office be damned.
Flawed, uncomfortable, pretentious and frequently irritating, Digger is a comedy where the punchline is that the joke is deliberately not actually all that funny. But as challenging as the film proves to be, it’ll be how it’s regarded in years to come that’ll be the true test – not how much money is didn’t make in its opening weekend.
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