Alejandro González Iñárritu is one of two filmmakers to ever win back-to-back Best Director Oscars, and I like maybe two of his films overall. He seems to make his point with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Full disclosure, when I walked into his newest film Digger on Friday afternoon, I was already in a bad mood. The news stories of the day were devastating and hopeless, and everything I experienced over the 8 hours I spent at my day job did not help matters. I went into Digger not knowing what to expect, because largely the plot of this film has been hidden from its advertising. And Digger is a divisive film full of wild, weird plot developments and twists, so I’m going to do my best today to describe why I didn’t like this movie in the most vague terms possible. I do think you should have the experience of being as surprised as I was by everything going on here. You may not like the movie, if you’re me you might even hate this movie. But that experience of discovery is the best thing Digger has going for it, even if what you’re discovering makes you almost physically ill.
Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) is an aging, eccentric oil tycoon who refuses to leave his mansion and refuses to let his ancient, miserable, ailing cat finally leave this world. He’s told his company has caused a potentially world-ending environmental disaster off the coast of Greenland, the effects of which are swiftly devastating the entire world. But Digger’s ignoring calls from scientists, and undermining the work of the one person in this room who knows what they’re talking about (Riz Ahmed). And of course the elderly, incompetent, incontinent, moronic president (John Goodman) is no help. Digger is happy to just ignore the catastrophe unfolding around him. And then about 40 minutes into the film, there’s a reveal which changes everything you’ve just seen.
It’s been a while since I walked out of a movie absolutely certain that it would be near the top of my worst-of-the-year list. Digger is shrill, grating and condescending. It makes its point early and often, and keeps banging you over the head with it repeatedly, screaming it at you until you leave the theater feeling defeated, depressed, exhausted, but more than anything else, annoyed. Ideologically I agree with everything this movie is saying. The grim situation it presents feels entirely too possible, and that’s terrifying. But also, Iñárritu is trying to make a comedy here, and he has no idea how to execute a joke, and when you combine that with the fact that satire is harder than it’s ever been because the world we live in has become a parody of itself, the script writes itself into a corner it can’t escape from.
In every moment of Tom Cruise’s performance you can feel his desperation to finally win his acting Oscar. He lets the director actually make him look his real height, he’s covered in full-body prosthetics and he actually looks his age. And it reminded me of a quote, I’m not sure which critic originally made this point, that there is a difference between ‘best acting’ and ‘most acting’. He’s trying very, very hard and you can see that in every moment of this performance. He never disappears into this role and makes you forget you’re watching Tom Cruise, and that wouldn’t be a problem if every moment did not feel so laborious. The problem with it is there’s not a lot of variety to this performance. He’s given one note to play and that’s pretty much it for the whole movie. I applaud him for continuing to really go for it at this stage of his career, but Cruise’s performance in Digger is one of the many reasons I couldn’t wait for this movie to end.
We’ve got a talented supporting cast giving mostly terrible performances, and the movie does a thing where it practically shouts at you ‘don’t you get it? The performances are SUPPOSED to be terrible!’ I found this annoying as well. Among them, we have the great Sandra Hüller, who seems uncomfortable always playing it at an 11, but that’s what she’s directed to do. We also have John Goodman, doing an obvious imitation of the idiot currently occupying the White House, and Michael Stuhlbarg as his VP. There’s not much to them either. I’m curious what the viewer is supposed to take away from the Jesse Plemons character, because the implications of it are rather sinister. The closest thing we have to an actor giving an actual performance here is Riz Ahmed, maybe because the viewer also shares his character’s exasperation throughout.
Iñárritu, as well as Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman are credited on this screenplay, and to its credit, it feels like everyone was in agreement on what they wanted this movie to be. Unfortunately what that is, is rather insufferable. Iñárritu is not a master of tone, and this is proven over and over again. The tone is smug, self-satisfied and grating and it stays that way throughout this runtime and there’s no variety to it. This brings me to another problem – the pacing. Digger runs just about two hours and if you told me this film was 75 hours long I would believe you. At certain points over the runtime I felt like this movie might never end, or so much time would have passed that I would leave the theater and enter the horrific, potentially apocalyptic hellscape the film hints at.
Even with all the problems I had with Digger, I can absolutely see it snagging Oscar nominations in a few categories, namely the production design. The detail with which David Gassner and Richard Johnson create the sets is extraordinary. It’s full of exciting little details that consistently fascinated me even as the movie made me want to bang my head against the wall. Also, legendary Oscar winning makeup designer Kazu Hiro will no doubt be nominated for the transformation he gives Cruise. Three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki will also likely get another nomination out of this, and rightly so, the film is always exciting to look at. Cosmo Sheldrake composes the score and I absolutely hate it. It’s bouncy and whimsical and very in your face and undercuts any tension a moment might have.
Overall, Digger is the kind of film that is designed specifically to be divisive. Warner Bros. is smartly leaning into its polarizing nature in the ad campaign, convincing audiences to decide for themselves, not unlike the ad campaign for Darren Aronofsky’s 2017 film mother! And I would advise you to see this thing for yourself, because what’s a bug for me might be a feature for you. There’s a chance there is something brilliant going on here, but the shrill, grating, insufferable tone just wore me down so much by the time we reached the end credits, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of that theater. I want to reiterate the point that I agree with everything this movie is saying ideologically. But ultimately that message can be boiled down to ‘our leaders are idiots’ and ‘we’re screwed’. And considering the film doesn’t have much more to say beyond that, it becomes tiring very quickly. I’ve always said I admire a big swing, even when it’s a swing and a miss. And this is still true, but Digger is a baffling, insane endurance test of a film, and one that made my bad mood yesterday even worse.
