The trailers for “Digger” hadn’t exactly won me over.
What looked to be one more simple-minded “satire” of the supposedly Dark Days of the Terrible Present Moment we’re all enduring. Another Eat-the-Rich fantasy sold to me by wealthy elites, no less — was not something I had any interest in buying.
But then, within a day, the reviews started coming in. And they were … bad. Even vicious. Biting.
Well, that got me intrigued. Why the reaction? My son had been interested all along, so the other night, after half a symphony concert (he was only interested in hearing the Rach 2, so we left at intermission), we joined five others at the local cinema and settled in.
What I had expected was not at all what I got. And while I can’t say that “Digger” is a delightful, flawless experience, much less a masterpiece, I emerged from the theater surprised, which is a rare thing nowadays, and provoked. And, as time has gone on, I have been impressed and challenged, too.
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu (whose work I know of, but have never watched) and of course, starring Tom Cruise (and others), “Digger” does, indeed begin the way the trailers lead one to expect: a super wealthy oil magnate faced with the news that his company’s work has caused an explosion that’s going to lead to global environmental catastrophe. The American government, led by President Compson (played by John Goodman), gets involved and everyone panics and points fingers.
It’s all exaggerated and cartoonish, with villains so villainous they could be twirling moustaches. The sets are lush, but heightened and artificial. In fact the whole thing seems less like a film presenting a scenario that might be conceived of as occurring in this world, as a … play.
Which, of course, it is.
What we’re seeing on screen for the first part of ‘Digger’ is a rehearsal for “Fossil Fools,” a play about those historical events that brought environmental catastrophe at some point in the past. Tom Cruise is playing an actor playing a role — as is everyone else.
Is this just an attempt at a clever trick, a self-indulgent directorial affect? No. Iñárritu has a point here, and it’s a fascinating one that emerges to hit us — the audience — in the face with our own culpability, in the very last minutes of the film.
Yes, “Digger” is a satire about The Present Moment, but not really the “Climate Crisis.” The movie could have been about any current issue that grabs the public interest, engenders rage, creates villains and saints who excommunicate each other, and nurtures a culture of scapegoats and Sin-Eaters.
That’s “Digger’s” target: a world in which narrative-promotion has replaced problem-solving, in which those narratives are created in order to hide the truth, protect bad actors, and distract. In which the public is drawn, once again, to bread and circuses and unabashedly prefers them, not just because they are an entertaining distraction, but because they feed the desire for simplistic bad guys whom we can comfortably blame rather than uncomfortably accept our own culpability and power to affect change.
I sense that’s at the core of some mainstream hostility to “Digger.” We’re accustomed to see literary and cinematic works climax in ecstatic, self-congratulatory paeans to the power of art in these dark days of the difficult times we’re in.
Iñárritu angers here, I think, because he hints that artists are as corruptible as any other force in society, and that the art created in response to a crisis might be the product, not of #resistance, but of aiding and abetting. The knife plunges even deeper, though, as he suggests that art might not always express the best of human nature, but possibly feed the worst, as we willfully ignore the complexities of reality in favor of lazy, punitive villanization, which makes us feel better, lets us off the hook, but then, in the end, changes not a thing.
