The most divisive movie of the year just might be Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s new film Digger. Iñárritu is the Oscar winning director behind Birdman and The Revenant, so excitement was high when he set out to make an extravagant climate crisis satire starring Tom Cruise.
But once the marketing started, people didn’t know what to make of Digger. The trailers hid most of the plot, and the sales pitch seemed to center exclusively on Tom Cruise. That actually is a pretty big selling point – Digger marks Cruise’s first non-action role since 2012, but it seems most of the audience doesn’t really know or care. Then the movie came out and reviews were mixed, with some critics calling the film too mannered, not funny enough, or too obvious.
I fall on the other side of the Digger divide, though. I went in expecting a grating movie that would annoy me and instead found insight and catharsis in the experience, as well as one of Riz Ahmed’s best performances yet. Cruise also is pretty great in the movie, starring as Digger Rockwell, an aging oil baron who is colluding with the president to hide the catastrophic reality of climate crisis. I won’t spoil the movie, but there is a lot more to the plot than just the hyper-stylized satire from the marketing.
What Digger becomes is more meta and urgent than just that alone. Instead, it looks at what art can and cannot offer. It can offer catharsis and connection, sure, but can it change the world? Iñárritu seems dubious, and Digger is a fascinating exploration of a world that knows what’s going wrong but doesn’t know how to fix it. I for one found the movie much more interesting and enthralling than the trailers or initial reviews made it seem.
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