This review contains spoilers.
A wildly ambitious film, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s comedic satire “Digger” is bound to be polarizing, as its complex meta-narrative structure will annoy some, yet impress others.
The film’s central conceit, revealed 20 minutes into the runtime, is that “Digger” is actually about the performance of a play. “Fossil Fools,” the play within the film, tells the story of a contemporary American oil tycoon named Digger Rockwell who triggers a climate apocalypse.
“Digger” succeeds as a work of entertainment and craft. Yet the complexity of the ideas underlying the film means that it doesn’t offer an easy, pleasurable watch.
As the bombastic Digger and the actor Curtis Markson who plays him, Tom Cruise is spectacular. Leaping, miming and commanding the “Fossil Fools” stage with sleazy charisma, Cruise is compelling as an over-the-top stand-in for American society. Digger has the manners of an LBJ-style “good ol’ boy” who eats and drinks with robust appetite, and the work ethic of a man whose motto is “rise early, work hard, strike oil.” His family’s rise from poverty to WWI-era war profiteering to a bona fide oil dynasty is meant to mirror America’s economic and military ascension in the 20th century.
If Digger’s virtues are recognizably American, so are his vices. His ease with immorality, and his penchant for corruption — audiences are immediately aware of his collusion with the fictional president for oil extraction — casts him as a crude caricature of the 21st century billionaire. Digger is ultimately destroyed by his fatal flaw: avarice. Yet audiences are denied the pleasure of that catharsis because, beyond simply representing the drama around the production, “Digger” illuminates the climate catastrophes ravaging the society in the film on which the play seeks to comment. Shots of the smug, gleeful audiences of “Fossil Fools” are juxtaposed by those of a world flooded by tsunamis. Consequently, Digger’s downfall fails to offer a genuine opportunity for relief because viewers’ attention is redirected to the unresolved drama raging on outside.
An exceptional acting moment for Cruise is when, speaking before the European Parliament, Markson as Digger rejects his company’s blame for America’s oil dependence, instead chastising the masses who rely on his oil for creating demand for “two-day delivery of shit you don’t need.” Cruise delivers a captivating performance in this scene with a visceral stage presence while heckling his audience with a pungent honesty and phenomenal arrogance. Notably, the Parliament members’ response — breaking out into unintelligible chanting and physical, internal fighting — makes them look just as ignoble as the tycoon.
Meanwhile, John Goodman is hilarious as the geriatric President Compson, who is dying from “cancer of the ass.” The fictional president — alongside his cartoonish cabinet of Bible-beaters, blood-thirsty generals and yes-men — are a familiar mirror of America’s current leaders.
The acting in “Fossil Fools” is purposefully overdone, a quality that might go unappreciated by some viewers. As the actress playing Digger’s hypocritical half-sister Sandra Hüller bemoans the family’s downfall through screams and tears without an ounce of reflection. While the story-within-a-story framework is entertaining, the humor in “Fossil Fools” nonetheless stems from unsubtle, sometimes overly didactic content. In another scene in the play, Compson and his cabal of sycophants are easy to mock when they blame the climate crisis on Chinese “communists” and “Russkies,” a derogatory term for Russians.
“Digger” isn’t just a comedy; it’s also definitely a satire — and, true to the genre, Iñárritu doesn’t privilege its pleasurable aspect at the cost of examining some harder truths. While the script is replete with vulgar humor, including politically incorrect jokes and expletives, audiences are meant to feel ashamed of their amusement. “Digger” also doesn’t completely absolve audiences, or contemporary society, of blame. In the film, Markson becomes distressed to the point of a melt-down over what he sees as the play’s overly comedic representation of the people on which “Fossil Fools” is based; he thinks the work doesn’t do justice to the suffering they have inflicted. Through this meta moment, the film reflects on the inadequacies of artistic representation.
In effect, the film is aware that it is as much a part of the flawed system as Digger himself — one that rewards those in power who are often complicit in blame. In addition to being directed by a four time Academy-Award-winning director, “Digger” was produced by Warner Bros. and stars Cruise, one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. Though it might seem hypocritical, this self-consciousness nonetheless elevates the film from a work of pure entertainment to thought-provoking satire. In effect, “Digger” is both a satire of modern America and a satire of satire.
“Digger” was actually originally titled “Blah Blah Blah.” So the point of the movie in fact may lie in its pointlessness, or at least the perception of its pointlessness. “Digger” is not positioned to genuinely spark change. As real-life audiences watch “Digger” this year, climate change probably will not improve, nor will any viewer likely change their behaviors. Satire has largely become toothless, at least according to the film’s perspective — consumed, reposted and retweeted, but not acted upon.
Jesse Plemons’ character, the producer of “Fossil Fools” remarks during a rehearsal scene late in the movie, “It really doesn’t matter: satire, comedy, farce, drama … Now what?” Audiences are prompted to wonder the same thing: Is there still a point to a satirical film when art today seems so politically ineffectual? “Digger” struggles to offer a complete answer, which is bound to leave some viewers unsatisfied.
As the climate apocalypse unfolds around him, Digger Rockwell remarks, “If we can’t control the course of nature, at least we can control the narrative.” Digger comes across as the ultimate public relations manipulator in the film. Still, these words perhaps affirm the value of art in our bleak circumstances: Like language itself, art may not always affect reality, but it affects perception — which would seem to amount to something.
Yet the film certainly seems to reject Digger’s narrative about climate change, which seeks to remove the burden of responsibility from himself and his company. Whenever Digger or Compson deliver their public speeches, their blustery, ultimately empty words are contrasted with images of European citizens’ corpses from the climate apocalypse.
Nonetheless, Iñárritu’s film itself is still an attempt to redirect some of the contemporary narrative around climate change, and this updated narrative does not solely criticize the visible bad guys. While satire can be easy — even rote — targeting the figures that we would all like to see brought down, “Digger” turns the critique towards our society at large, which has allowed climate change to fester.
Unfortunately, the efficacy of Iñárritu’s work seems to have been compromised by its intricate delivery for a lot of viewers. While brilliant, the complexity of the film’s conceit seems to have alienated many of them. Perhaps those who decry the film’s stupidity, like the man beside me in the theater when the credits began rolling, are correct. Maybe the people who celebrate the film, laughing at the allusions to society’s current quagmire, are no better than the manic parliament Rockwell addresses. Therein lies the film’s genius and trouble.
Olivia Sapper ’29 is a reporter from Darien, Conn., and is majoring in Government.
