I’ve taken a few days to write this review, as it took me quite a while to fully wrap my head around what I thought of Digger; to be honest, I still haven’t entirely. My head was full of thoughts, critiques, and praise; if I’d written this any earlier, it would have seemed like the crazed ramblings of a conspiracy theorist. However, I think I’m finally ready to give some amount of a coherent summary of my thoughts on Digger.
Firstly, Alejandro G. Iñárritu is the only man who could have possibly pulled this off. He’s firing on all cylinders and is the biggest, brightest, and most exaggerated version of himself within Digger. Just like Birdman before it, Iñárritu does wonders with a dense, fast-moving, monologue-heavy script, bringing some sense of normality and coherence to an otherwise nonsensical, impossible-to-follow plot. I’m not saying Digger doesn’t occasionally become quite nonsensical, though Iñárritu manages to make some amount of sense of what’s going on.
Digger was a very confusing experience for me. Not because I didn’t know what was going on, but because of how I was reacting to it. At times, I’d be sitting there, thinking, “I’m not sure I like this very much”, though at the same time realising I was unable to take my eyes off what I was currently seeing, wondering how long it had been since I last blinked. Somehow, no matter how much this story appeals to you, it finds a way to draw you in entirely.
This tells the audience its morals and messages in the clearest way possible; some may say spoon-feeding, though I say necessary. If the reactions to the trailer for Robert Pattinson’s morally grey Primetime were any indication, sometimes a message needs to be screamed at an audience for them to understand, and Digger definitely does so. Though its messages aren’t only screamed from the rooftops, but also hidden within its characters - which I think is the important distinction between treating the audience as illiterate and simply seeing the need for as direct a message as possible.
I think back to the private jet scene, in which Tom Cruise’s Digger and Riz Ahmed’s Ganesh are having a simple conversation. Digger will soon stand in front of a UN summit and explain his situation, giving reason for his own standpoint in the oil industry, despite its blatant effects. As Ganesh confronts Digger about the damage his business is causing, we see Digger calm, sitting opposite him, eating some tuna. Rather than assert his power - assure Ganesh that he could destroy him with a snap of his fingers - Digger calmly tells him to say whatever he likes to the UN. Surely putting the harm Digger has caused firsthand on full display would ruin him, though?
Throughout, Digger is trying to tell Ganesh to take a bite of this tuna, despite his moral obligation as a result of the dwindling population. By the end of this long conversation, Ganesh finally eats a bit of tuna, after Digger explains the nurturing upbringing that these tuna had. The second Ganesh puts this endangered species in his mouth, Digger tells him that every word of that story was a lie. We see how quickly Digger is able to, so effortlessly, bend one man’s morals with a few simple words, so who’s to say he can’t do the same to the public’s perception of oil drilling?
Of course, Tom Cruise was absolutely incredible in his first non-IP movie since 2017’s American Made. He now seems intent on showing people that Interview With The Vampire, Magnolia, and Eyes Wide Shut Tom Cruise never left, even if it seemed he had been corrupted by the Mission Impossible franchise and his ‘movie star’ persona. I just hope this sparks a new era in his career, in which he accepts more of these strange, experimental, extraordinary roles to really return to his ‘90s and early '00s self.
Digger is jam-packed with A1 performers and performances across the board. From John Goodman to Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons to Sophie Wilde, Emma D’Arcy to Riz Ahmed, every single actor seemed sure of this movie’s status. Iñárritu is unable to turn in a bad effort; everyone knew that and knew they had to do the same. If Digger doesn’t appear in every acting category at this year’s Oscars, I will be very surprised and sorely disappointed.
I’ll finally talk about the elephant in the room: the twist. I feel quite conflicted about this movie ultimately depicting a play about events that took place twenty years ago. The reason I’m not sure of this is that I feel it somewhat takes away some of the stakes and the realism factor. I can’t fully explain how, but there’s something about knowing the world continues after this story that makes it lose some of its impact. However, whenever we’d witness an extensive monologue, namely Digger ranting about the public’s hidden need for fossil fuels to the UN, that feeling came rushing back as if it never left.
One thing I did like about this story being set in the future was the credits rolling. That very much sounds like a facetious critique on the movie as a whole, but I loved sitting through the credits, just looking in the background. We see so much world building in the few seconds we see of the outside world, in its robot police force, mass flooding, heavily armed police roaming the streets, unsafe air, and plenty of graffiti. This all gives us a clear picture of how Digger Rockwell left the state of the world, a world that he decided he no longer wanted to live in, in an attempt to escape the consequences of every single one of his actions. So who sees those consequences? Us, the regular people who have to live in this now ruined world while Rockwell lies at peace, somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.
While Digger is quite a confusing watch, in how it made me feel, there’s absolutely no denying the technical greatness of this. The production design, the costuming, the editing, the acting, the booming score, the lively colour all paints an undoubtedly Oscar-worthy picture, which I’m sure will at least be nominated across the board. I’m sure my thoughts on Digger as a whole will fluctuate for a few weeks, but as of now I believe this is one of the more unique and wonderfully depressing movies of the year which I’d recommend to absolutely anybody.