“When all else fails, you hit ’em with the truth. Hit ’em with the hard truth. Just bang, bang, bang!” Yep. Get the truth out there, never be afraid to say it. But will the truth piss off people? Will it upset viewers? Of course it will! That is why the truth is so scary. Unless, like Digger Rockwell, you can craft a narrative out of it & twist it to your advantage. “Digger here got us in this mess, and Digger’s gonna dig us out again,” doofus President Compson shouts at one point. And that’s exactly what he’s going to do! Or is he? Digger is the latest creation from Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu and it’s a doozy. After all the secrets and careful marketing and cryptic teases, we now know what Digger really is. It turns out it’s a climate change satire making fun of satires, showing us how the world enjoys stories so much, they forget to actually go & solve major problems the real world. Yes it’s true – some people are going to hate this movie (more later), some people are going to love it. I’m the latter – Digger is as sharp as Dr. Strangelove, as angry as Don’t Look Up, but with Iñárritu’s brilliant theatricality commenting on how doomed the world is now.
Digger is the 8th feature film from the acclaimed filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu (who now goes by just Alejandro G. Iñárritu) following his sort-of-autobiographical film Bardo, which ended up bombing big time in 2022. Iñárritu also co-wrote the screenplay with Alexander Dinelaris (Birdman), Nicolás Giacobone (Biutiful, Birdman, Bardo), and Sabina Berman. Without revealing all of the spoilers up front – Digger is a layered story-within-a-story tale of the rich schmucks who ruin the planet. The main characters we meet at the start are Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell, a Texas oil barren royal asshole rich idiot; his good friend the jackass US President Compson, featuring John Goodman giving one of the most unhinged performances of his career; Sandra Hüller as Emma Rockwell, Digger’s half-sister & fellow business owner; Michael Stuhlbarg as the Vice President; and a few other people who get involved in this climate change incident including mainly Riz Ahmed as Ganesh, a scientist who’s taken in by these guys to assess, explain, perhaps fix the situation. The reveal at the start is that Digger’s greedy oil drilling in Greenland causes a massive ice shelf to break off and drift to Europe, resulting in mass casualties when it reaches the continent. Digger and his greed is clearly responsible, but can Digger clean up this mess and shift the blame? Ohhh you bet he can.
Many complaints made online by people judging solely footage in the trailers have been about how ugly and grey the film looks. It’s all hogwash nonsense. Once you’ve seen the entire film, anyone will understand (and see) there’s a point to that “look” – it’s part of the Fossil Fools stage production that is the story-with-the-story. Digger’s DP is three-time Oscar-winning (8-time nominated), one-of-the-best-in-cinema-history-ever cameramen, Emmanuel Lubezki. This guy absolutely knows what he is doing and he made a choice with Iñárritu to film these scenes & this part of the film this way. Because it’s a theatrical production – stylized like a stage show and meant to be exaggerated and phony (and “fun” in a way that is ultimately criticized by the end). And obviously Iñárritu & Lubezki love their theatricality, as they’re the same team that won all the Oscars for Birdman a decade ago. Anyone that watches the film and still thinks it looks dull needs their eyes checked. Of course, it is not as magnificent and grand as The Revenant, but that’s because this is a whole different story – most of which takes place on stage and in the backrooms of a big theater. It’s exceptionally obvious they’re referencing Swedish satire master Roy Andersson and the look & style of his films as part of telling this stage satire. Maybe I am just a sucker for their filmmaking, but I always love the way Iñárritu & Lubezki shoot their films. They’re always delightfully rich & ornately framed with precision and ingenuity.
It also turns out that Digger is not really a comedy, despite what marketing claims. It’s a tragedy. A full-on, no holds barred “we’re so doomed” tragedy about climate change – specifically our inability to stop or deal with it, to get rid of the rich guys who are causing it (and making it worse), or how to prevent it and stop the world from continuing down this path. That’s not supposed to be funny. And the fake satire in the film, this Fossil Fools comedy, is not really supposed to be that funny either – despite that it’s also satire. The most poignant moments in the film are when Cruise’s Digger character pulls himself out of this story and engages in actual heated, meaningful discussions about whether telling this story is beneficial or meaningful. This is a conversation starter and something that everyone should be discussing once they’ve seen Digger. There’s also a powerful, unforgettable monologue right in the middle of it all. Everything Digger says in the first half of this monologue is entirely true, he’s right. Then he uses the second half of this jaw-drop-inducing speech to spin the narrative back around to him and make him look like the “good guy” to save the day. The point of all of us this is to allow us to see the mechanisms of how rich schmucks trick & manipulate the world, and get us to believe in their bullshit narratives. I hope everyone picks up on this when that riveting scene plays.
Let me say it now – climate change (aka global warming) is the most important issue in our lifetimes. It is not something to ignore or shrug off or belittle. Every other major problem on the planet is connected to it – wars, immigration, starvation, conservation, every country’s economy, humanity’s safety and prosperity, etc. My other obvious bias is that I always, always enjoy films that say the truth about climate change, confront the realities of how doomed we are, and reflect that truth back onto all of us. Not every film that does this is successful or entertaining, but they’re important nonetheless. Don’t Look Up is a noble failure as well, a film that I can barely rewatch. And honestly I wonder the same about Digger. While I loved watching it for the first time at my press screening, is it really an “entertaining” film to enjoy? Or is it just a film that I think is vitally important and worth recommending because it is brave enough and wild enough to actually address humanity directly and tell us – hey, we’re all a part of this failure. The film’s ultimate message is that the catharsis we get watching these stories play out where a bad guy gets what’s coming to him is nice, but they don’t actually make a real difference in the world & nothing really gets better. We aren’t stopping bad guys (the rich schmucks) or solving climate change now matter how good that movie, play, or song makes us feel.
I could go on for hours* talking about why I think this is a very clever film that does sharply & successfully criticize not only the art we consume, but the audiences, and how art has very little impact on the real world anymore. Yes, this is frustrating… But I also do not think this film deserves any of the hate it’s getting from so many other critics. It is not insufferable, it is not unwatchable, it is not a “torturous experience“, above all – it is absolutely not empty or meaningless. Even if you don’t like or disagree with what it’s trying to say or do, totally fine, but there’s no way anyone can legitimately say it’s pointless. Digger’s existence is valuable in human history, as a critical look at humanity’s failure to do anything about climate change. At the very least, I hope it makes everyone think about how little we’re actually doing to solve climate change now, how much more we all need to do (and specifically how it’s these guys at the top that are the source of all our problems and that they must be stopped), and how important it is to stop it before it’s too late. If that’s the ultimate effect this film has on viewers, then Iñárritu has achieved his goal. My only real complaint is that he never really offers any suggestions for solutions, or what to do, just that we’re all headed this way no matter what. I hope one day soon we’ll figure it all out – and this film will be looked back on with more fondness as a Dr. Strangelove-inspired look at our apathy and cowardice in dealing with the great problem of climate change.
Alex’s Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
Read more posts in: Discuss, Review
