DIGGER

Everything about 'Digger' is a massive swing, from the narrative and thematic gambit it pulls to the preposterous aesthetics to the gigantic performances from practically everyone involved. At first, it feels like a dangerous mix, threatening to overwhelm the film with too much sound and fury, but as Iñárritu carefully navigates us through the world of 'Digger', these idiosyncrasies begin to make sense. His intentions though are both thunderingly obvious and hard to pin down, with each sequence as unwieldy and slippery as a tuna plucked fresh from the sea. Iñárritu's approach, at almost every turn, is maximalist, as if the film is in a constant state of yelling, but again, this never feels without purpose. How you receive the film is entirely dependent on how you position yourself in relation to that purpose. At times, it's as if we're watching a psychotic break in motion, but you're never entirely sure whether it's the characters or us who are having the breakdown.

This makes sense, considering the social issue it tackles is the ever-spiralling climate crisis. The film is explicit in how self-conscious greed and disregard for humanity have set us on this path towards inevitable catastrophe, and as obvious and histrionic as this sometimes seems (such as an extended speech by Digger to the European Union), there is something quite thrilling in a film of this scale just actually saying it out loud. The fact this is a studio-backed film is kind of insane, and considering where the film ultimately lands us, darkly ironic. The question constantly grapples with who is to blame, starting at the top but slyly looking down the ladder of power as well. It's just as concerned with what we do after as much as what we do now, though a nihilistic streak through the film certainly suggests that we're now past the point of salvation. In this sense, 'Digger' is a deceptively bleak film, whose method of delivery is often a subtle as a mallet to the face.

As intriguing as the sheer volume of stuff in the film are its absences. For a film so concerned with the environment, nature itself is almost entirely missing. The film exists within enclosed spaces, whether they be domestic or places of power, with the natural world an abstract idea. The men in power (the many, many men) have no need for nature other than as a resource to strip for profit. Even the stunning views out of Digger's window look more like a painting than anything realistic, less an idealised artist's view of nature than what Generative AI would come up with. In the case of Digger's preposterous mansion, he is surrounded by trophies of nature, but all of them dead, stuffed or (in the case of his decrepit 30-year-old cat Maggie) dying, and other spaces are built of concrete or steel, with no presence whatsoever of the actual sky. The aesthetic does risk being derivative of filmmakers like Yorgos Lanthimos, but legendary cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki gives the film its own visual language, one that's ever-flowing and giddying. 'Digger' is a film you can practically smell: that stale, dust-filled scent of spaces where air has barely moved through. In that sense, the film reminded me a touch of 'Children of Men', from Iñárritu's compatriot Alfonso Cuarón, in that it is a film where a noticeable absence affects your emotional journey through the film as an audience.

That Iñárritu would deliver a film difficult to summarise, comprehend, or really anchor yourself in shouldn't be a surprise, and 'Digger' is certainly one of his most formally challenging films. The most intriguing component here is Tom Cruise, once an actor who pursued working with the great auteur filmmakers but lately more concerned with being an auteur of his own. As great as his 'Mission: Impossible' films and ancillary projects like 'Top Gun: Maverick' have been, there's never been any doubt that Cruise was the primary artist in all these instances. With 'Digger', he finally places himself fully in the hands of an idiosyncratic filmmaker again and, as a result, delivers one of the best performances of his career. It isn't just that he allows himself to be so physically transformed but that his performance as Digger is so purposely repulsive, not a caricature like his work in 'Tropic Thunder' but as a devouring, masculine ghoul, American exceptionalism made manifest. He enters with overwhelming bravado and beats every scene to death with the sheer force of his combined charisma, intelligence and uncompromising dedication to the conceit of the film. And when Iñárritu plays his major narrative gambit, it also opens the scope for what Cruise can pursue. There are even points, unbelievably, where Cruise almost disappears into the background, itself integral to landing that gambit. There are times where the sheer volume of what Cruise is doing descends into Texan-infused white noise, but this is the trick he and the film are pulling, to emulate the rambling nonsense of these deranged rich men of power that renders us listeners incapable of a rational response.

As delightful as great Cruise is in 'Digger' is how uniformly excellent the entire ensemble is. A standout is certainly John Goodman, one of our greatest actors, landing a performance even more unhinged and grotesque than Cruise's. To balance that is the panicked anger of Riz Ahmed as Dr Ganesh, frantically screaming that the world is ending while slowly realising he helped it happen. Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Sophie Wilde and Emma D'Arcy also deliver immensely memorable performances in their scenes opposite Cruise, but with the sheer size of this cast, it's impressive the degree to which they all make an impression.

As intellectually rigorous/maddening as 'Digger' is, it's also, at times, wildly entertaining and very funny, pulsating with the anarchy of a Looney Tunes cartoon. One great scene early on sees a room full of old white men deciding the fate of the world, delivered at such furious pace and such heightened energy that you almost feel bombarded by it. In the same way you rush to keep ups with its ideas, 'Digger' demands you keep up with the rapid-fire pace of its comedy, whether that be wit or slapstick. There's a risk that such a pace doesn't give the audience time to breathe, and there were certainly times (as engaged as I was) that I was holding in for dear life.

Whether you enjoy 'Digger' or not, I think, depends on how you navigate the film's major turning point. What Alejandro G. Iñárritu imposes on us as an audience is the need to work with the film - in a theatrical, Brechtian sense - to render strange everything you see and to force you to come to your own understanding and interpretation of it. The overwhelming visual and aural noise of the film would be exhausting enough, but there isn't a moment where you can look away, lest your brain misses a beat. You can either work it or step away from it, there really isn't an in-between. And in the end, you're left with your head swimming with so many questions. What was it trying to say? Whose position did it take? Who is the mirror actually reflecting? At points in 'Digger', I was equal parts enthralled and horrified, because what the distorted mirror was capturing in its satirical reflection was something already so distorted that, instead of making it more ridiculous, it all became startling, horribly clear. And rather than laugh, I did just want to scream.

So... did I like 'Digger'? Ultimately I fall on the side of unequivocally yes, and in the hours since I saw it, I certainly haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I'm a sucker for big, bold, impassioned swings, films like 'Babylon' and 'Cloud Atlas' and the remake of 'Suspiria', and also involve being formally challenged by a film, even if it doesn't entirely work. 'Digger' is a film that will pose a real challenge to its audience, who will be equally as likely to be put off by its confusion and chaos, or annoyed by its complete lack of subtlety. One thing is for sure - I can't wait for others to see it so I can talk about 'Digger' with as many people as possible.