WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON DIGGER?
“You either love it or hate it.” That’s been the official Marmite slogan ever since 1996, and like the most effective marketing campaigns it’s become embedded within wider UK culture, to where one can simply dub something as “Marmite” and every single person will know exactly what you’re on about. For example, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s latest film Digger is, as you will have no doubt already heard, proving to be something of a Marmite movie among critics and audiences, with some critics being extremely vocal about their displeasure with the film and others defending it as a misunderstood masterpiece.
Personally, I like Marmite. It certainly has a bitter taste, can be far too sharp on the tongue, and is more often than not bound to leave you feeling quite bloated afterwards, but it hits that sweet spot just right when you need it to. To a point, I can say something similar about Digger, for while it is deeply flawed, it is a wholly unique experiment by a filmmaker that refuses to do anything by halves, and whose vision is admirable to where, even if you ultimately dislike the final product, you can respect his fearlessness in bringing it to life.
That being said, I never said that this is a successful experiment. If nothing else, Digger is proof that you can be a multi-Oscar-winning visionary filmmaker like Iñárritu, or even the biggest movie star in the world like Tom Cruise, and you can still find yourself fumbling the bag – but not for lack of trying.
In the film, Cruise plays aging Texan oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, who is informed early on that his manned oil rigs in the Arctic have caused a methane explosion which has sent an iceberg the size of Manhattan named “Judy” hurtling towards Europe, which will cause catastrophic tsunamis and cause widespread infrastructure damage as well as countless deaths. Digger’s ensuing mission to save face with everyone from the President of the United States (John Goodman) to meek scientific advisor Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) to his own family, including half-sister Emma (Sandra Hüller), proves to be an increasingly thankless task, as the reality of the situation quickly becomes apparent.
Or at least, it does for the first half-hour or so of the film. At that point, Digger becomes something that I am not at liberty to reveal (partially due to a strongly-worded plea at my screening by the filmmakers to keep the surprises safe from others), but rest assured it will make or break the film for a lot of viewers, particularly those who will be going in expecting one thing but then find that it’s another thing entirely. Without giving the game away, I did find myself more invested in this new direction than I was in what the film started as, which was this strangely detached satire where the jokes, the commentary, the characters and even the filmmaking went no further than the mere surface they walked upon. As it transpires, that is all by design, but Iñárritu doesn’t exactly make a strong case for the viewer having to endure a whole film of such disappointingly thin material.
For instance, the humour in this film is largely stagnant, settling for very obvious jokes about the ineffectiveness of world leaders in times of crises, with little to no attempt at hiding which real-life figures or institutions they’re targeting. Goodman’s US President is – wait for it – a cantankerous autocrat who surrounds himself with openly racist and misogynist officials, has a Bible-thumping evangelical preacher travelling with him everywhere he goes, and an utter charisma vacuum of a Vice-President (a criminally underused Michael Stuhlbarg) on imminent standby. It’d be one thing if there was more to this character than just the Trump parallels, but there really isn’t as not even Goodman’s hammy performance can give him any further dimensions, and unfortunately a lot of the other cast members meet this fate as well like Stuhlbarg, Hüller, Jesse Plemons, Emma D’Arcy and others (bar Riz Ahmed, who shines brightest among these supporting players) who are all left to play up the theatrics to disguise how shallow their roles are.
It’s a similar situation to Don’t Look Up, which was just as much of a Marmite film for its own sense of smarminess and self-superiority surrounding the real dangers of ignoring climate change, though Digger perhaps has more ideas behind its belt which, again, are not entirely awful but lack the necessary execution to make them work. Iñárritu is a technically accomplished filmmaker, as films like Birdman and The Revenant have proven, but here he sticks to a fairly safe style which highlights a world that is deliberately ugly to look at, thanks to Emmanuel Lubezki’s sharp if somewhat unremarkable cinematography, yet lacks the fundamental substance to give it much life. Yet, you can still sense directorial passion in how Iñárritu is framing a lot of these shots and incorporating all these big narrative swings, which are fascinating to watch to some degree.
As for Cruise, he is firing on all cylinders in this very larger-than-life performance that only an exceptionally committed performer like him could deliver, which is most evident in a central set-piece where he delivers an extended monologue like he’s performing Hamlet by way of Foghorn Leghorn. However, while Cruise’s bombastic lead turn is probably the best part of Digger, or at least the main reason to check out this movie, one only needs to watch him as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder for a funnier, more interesting character of this nature than Digger Rockwell, who in addition to mostly being obnoxious similarly falls victim to a script that barely digs beneath his skin to understand what kind of person he actually is. Y’know, beyond being the one-dimensional rich Texan tycoon archetype that The Simpsons more or less perfected years ago.
So, to go back to the Marmite debate, is Digger something I love or something I hate? The answer is neither; there’s too many baffling decisions in its filmmaking and especially its storytelling choices for me to truly love it, but it also has so much passion behind it, particularly from Cruise who really is acting his tiny heart out, that I can’t truly hate it. As a result, my favour towards it remains fixed somewhere in the middle, for while I do respect the ambition behind this film, I can also acknowledge that it is an experiment that doesn’t produce many favourable results. However, I would rather a film like this try and fail rather than not try at all, and Digger certainly tries, even if much of it can sadly be described as a failure.
