For the filming of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s new film “Digger,” a satirical black comedy about an aging oil tycoon facing a potentially apocalyptic crisis of his own making, Tom Cruise required extensive prosthetics — six hours of them, to be exact. True to his reputation as the most enthusiastic person in any room, Cruise proudly claims that by encouraging the makeup artists (and practicing with them using a stopwatch), they cut the entire process from six hours to less than one. Since this is basically unheard of, the anecdote played well in the press conference. But Cruise’s story is also an ironic reflection of “Diggers”: an undeniably ambitious project whose self-confidence belies a stubborn disregard for everyone but itself.
Usually, this kind of thing isn’t that bad in movies. More filmmakers should be so confident in their vision that they can successfully shut out other people’s ideas, refusing to dull their boldest ideas or temper their biggest swings. But “The Diggers” complicates this certainty, weaving the audience so tightly into the fabric of the story that they are tethered to their seats and forced to sit with their eyes open while Iñárritu points his finger at them. His thematic concepts and narrative diversions rely on the audience’s presence. Without us, there is no one to blame as the film reveals its layers, no one to compare to the wide-eyed viewers of the film’s global collapse.
(Warner Bros. Pictures) Tom Cruise in “Diggers”
Inarritu reduces our connection to art and distracts us. While this idea may be true for some, it’s not universal, and Iñárritu’s arrogant assumptions only reflect how out of touch “The Diggers” is with the reality it thinks it understands well enough to satirize.
Diggers cannot be a great movie on its own; Its success relies on tension-generating discourse, on attributing its huge errors of judgment to cowardly choices, and on complacency in intellectual differences. “This movie is supposed to be annoying,” it argued again and again. “It should move with the speed of a slug and be illuminated by the decaying pale color of a corpse’s shell. If you don’t understand that, you must not understand that this movie has become our reality.” Making a movie about the end of the world, asserting the audience’s need to understand their own complicity, requires an unforgiving worldview that maintains a vertical mile of distance between art and audience. In “The Diggers,” Iñárritu commands — quoting “Real Housewives of New York” star Kelly Bensimon — “You come to me, I’m not going to come to you.”
But I can play ball. Of course, Americans did elect Donald Trump for a second time. It’s fair to assume that many of us need a stern talk like a dog needs a pill hidden in cheese, such is Cruise’s Mr. Movie persona. But the problem with Iñárritu’s approach is that he frames “The Diggers” as a satire of a post-ironic world, a bleak state of life that verges on the comic on a daily basis. The more obvious problem, however, is that he seems to think it’s a novel concept that he can mine with a twist, stripping away parts of “The Digger” to examine the relationship between audiences and the artistic conduits (like this film) they use to breathe between horrors.
Once Iñárritu peels away the skin, he continues to take cheap shots at the exposed wounds, distracting us from our connection to the art. He believes that nowadays, people go to movies or plays, watch TV or read books, either to avoid this bleak reality or to escape from it. While this idea may be true for some, it’s not universal, and Iñárritu’s arrogant assumptions only reflect how out of touch “The Diggers” is with the reality it thinks it understands well enough to satirize.
Saying all of this in general terms, without context, would be an argument as convincing as Iñárritu’s – which is to say, not very convincing. However, this does mean that a key spoiler for the film is coming, which takes place about 40 minutes into the film. If you don’t want to know more, please pause here. (But bookmark this page to come back, no?)
Iñárritu spends the first quarter of the film setting up the scene and characters—bizarrely, literally, raising what looks like a stage curtain, but is actually a curtain. Cruise plays digger Rockwell, who crawls out of bed to try to feed his strangely behaving cat and then learns that his oil rig in Greenland has exploded. Lively scientist Dr. Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) warns Digg that an explosion has sent a massive ice shelf towards Norway, which will flood the coast and hundreds of thousands of people. But this is just the beginning. The explosion triggered more movement, and another glacier is moving toward Alaska. To avoid panic and stay ahead of the curve, Diggle meets with the President (John Goodman) and the military to discuss next steps.
As Diggle and the President looked out the window, a light flashed. A tree fell in the distance, and a giant hand reached out from the ground and put it back in its place. Iñárritu revealed that it was all rehearsals for a new production of the cult classic Fossil Fools, which tells the story of a real-life climate disaster and the actors who changed the world forever. Digger and all the characters we’ve met so far are actors. This explains their bragging nature. Their constant screaming and yelling is a feature of the play’s meta-irony. Unfortunately for us moviegoers, that didn’t make watching the rest of the rehearsal any more enjoyable.
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If anything, it’s the “twist” – that’s in quotes, because I tend to view anything that happens in less than an hour in a two-hour-plus movie as a plot point rather than a twist – that hurts the goodwill of the audience. The jokes aren’t very funny because they don’t fit into the natural rhythm of the movie. Overacting is exhausting because it’s not only Iñárritu’s creative choice but also the approach taken by the director of the movie-within-a-movie. Each frame of “Digger” passes through two additional meta layers. It’s certainly an interesting exercise for the filmmakers, but the rest of us are waiting for Iñárritu’s larger message to come into play. Placing the narrative left turn so early in the film almost feels like a ploy to contain the dramatic strike.
Those who resist the urge to do other things with their precious time will be met with not rewards but accusations. There you are, yes, you in seat 11E; you’re no different from the doomed fools who came to see Fossil Idiot. Like them, do you want sarcasm to make you feel smart and make you feel like you’re one of the good guys? Too bad. Just continue to exist and endure a life you had no choice in, and you’re no better than Rockwell the Digger.
(Warner Bros. Pictures) John Goodman “The Diggers”
Iñárritu depicts the common man as a seal, ready to bark and clap at anything that hints at reality. His films spew malice from every pore, a complete disgust for humanity. Yes, we all have some degree of complicity in the ultimate end of the world. Tell us something we don’t know.
Of course, the film doesn’t express this in so many words. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Cruise’s character is intentionally similar to his own film-making skills, and the actor believes every scene he plays should have some level of authenticity. But when he debates the importance of authenticity, the show’s producer Kenny (Jesse Plemons) reminds him that authenticity doesn’t matter to viewers. People come to vent. They wanted to cheer Digger’s death. This brief purge won’t save them, but it will keep them going.
There’s no shortage of ideas to mine from this fact about how we use art to deal with issues that sometimes work against ourselves. As “Digger” briefly emits this resonance, its warring aspects begin to merge, before Inarritu strikes them with a shovel and breaks everything again. Just after the audience’s emotions were released on the opening night, the theater was filled with a sound warning of “Level 4 Warning”. (How convenient that this all happened after the play ended!) Not surprisingly, the audience donned their luxury PPE—branded “LUNGZ,” with a cute “Z” at the end, as all these sheep have more than happily adapted to their new normal—and headed out into war-torn streets patrolled by drones and robot police. Roll the points, roll the eyes.
As if this whole thing wasn’t self-satisfying enough, Iñárritu jabbed his finger at the audience one last time. About 90 seconds later, the film’s end-credits song is interrupted by the same “Level 4” warning, this time aimed at viewers trudging out of the theater (or, in the near future, falling asleep on the couch).
In a movie full of contrived insults, this is the most maddening, suggesting that anyone watching this movie is no smarter than the “fossil fool” audience. Iñárritu depicts the common man as a seal, ready to bark and clap at anything that hints at reality. His films spew malice from every pore, a complete disgust for humanity. Yes, we all have some degree of complicity in the ultimate end of the world. Tell us something we don’t know.
To mock the human need for emotional communication through art in such a vicious way is not just a slap in the face, but a slap in the face. This is evidence of Iñárritu’s deep-seated insecurities. By satirizing our desire to see our experiences in art without any emotional resonance, Iñárritu comes across with an unjust malevolence, uneasy with the fact that his films are too vast and confusing to consistently make such connections. What a cruel travesty “Diggers” is for Warner Bros. The last film before being swallowed up by Paramount-Skydance. It could be ambitious, or it could be exactly the role Cruise needs to pursue. But the film merely asserts its own unfortunate place in history, rather than treating it as a tragedy. Dig too much into your own ideas and they will eventually become hollow.
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