Digger Review: Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Audacious Satire Gets Buried Beneath Its Own Cleverness

Title: Digger

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Cast: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, Jesse Plemons, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sandra Huller

Where: In theatres.

Rating: ***

Review

Alejandro G. Iñárritu has made a film that seems determined to outsmart both its audience and itself. Digger begins as an ecological disaster drama, with oil magnate Digger Rockwell presiding over a looming catastrophe while wealth, power and denial do their familiar dance. Then the floor shifts. What appears to be reality is revealed as a theatrical exercise, with actors rehearsing a play about fossil-fuel greed, environmental collapse and the vanity of those who believe money can negotiate with nature.

It is an intriguing conceit, especially because Iñárritu appears to be poking fun at the increasingly obvious machinery of contemporary political satire. The trouble is that the joke gradually becomes indistinguishable from what it mocks. The fictional play is deliberately strident, its characters declaiming rather than conversing, yet Digger spends so much time inside this noisy theatrical universe that its critique begins to resemble an endorsement of the very excesses it wants to expose.

Flashes of intelligence appear in the construction. The screenplay takes risks, the tonal shifts keep the viewer alert, and beneath the theatrical absurdity lies a serious question about what artists owe reality when the world itself becomes increasingly difficult to parody.

Actors’ Performance

Tom Cruise throws himself into the role with considerable relish. His performance has an amusing instability, shifting between swagger, theatrical affectation and flashes of vulnerability, particularly as the actor underneath the character begins to surface. Riz Ahmed is more restrained and often provides the comic oxygen the film desperately needs. Jesse Plemons and Michael Stuhlbarg add texture, while Sandra Hüller is given surprisingly little to work with.

Music and Aesthetics

Visually, Digger is lavish without being conventionally pretty. The production design embraces the artificiality of its theatrical world, while Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography distinguishes the stage-bound gloom from the more vivid spaces beyond it. Cosmo Sheldrake's score is considerably less interested in whispering than announcing itself from the rooftops. At times, the film's technical ambition is more convincing than its emotional architecture.

FPJ Verdict

Overall, the film is clever enough to recognise the absurdity of modern satire, and ambitious enough to turn that recognition into its own elaborate theatrical puzzle. Unfortunately, it digs deeper into the puzzle than into its people. What remains is an audacious, beautifully mounted film whose ideas are considerably more interesting than the experience of watching them unfold.