Believe me, I do not say this lightly. Not since DR. STRANGELOVE has there been a better black comedy, a more effectively savage satire than DIGGER. Alejandro G. Iñárritu has crafted a film that does more than merely point the finger at the evils of unbridled capitalism and government collusion (corruption, if you prefer). Rather, it, ahem digs uncomfortably at the infrastructure that makes all that possible. Prepare to be challenged as well as enlightened and entertained.
Our eponymous protagonist, played with the inspired narcissism of a fire-and-brimstone preacher by Tom Cruise, is a man given to exploitation and excess, both in his home décor and his relationship to people and to the planet. His selfishness and self-delusion is perfectly summed up in his relationship to his cat, Maggie, an aged creature with a laundry list of ailments and begging for the sweet release of death. Alas, Digger is far too attached to the feline, as he is to nothing and no one else save his oil business. The poor thing struggles on in the lap of cruel luxury. As for the planet, that, too, is suffering, but from Digger’s need to pump every drop of oil out of Greenland before his leases expire. Not for his own enrichment, he claims, but to prevent unemployment and keep the rideshares going.
Unfortunately, the rigs have triggered a massive iceberg to calve from the ice shelf and it’s big enough to pretty much end Northern Europe. Depending on the salinity of the water and the prevailing winds, that is. What ensues is a brilliant dialectic on finger-pointing and framing a narrative that eschews what the facts clearly state. In Iñárritu s hands, the plot spins ever further into the absurd while remaining firmly rooted in truth. Hence, the president (John Goodman) and his cabinet meet in Digger’s palatial home, and a world congress pelts Digger with a shoe before being mesmerized into thunderous applause and approbation when he confesses to his worst ecological sins. In a universe where the truth is fungible, this is the result, extrapolated only a little to make a deeply disquieting point.
What Iñárritu does best is to keep his audience off-balance at any given moment in the story. Reality is never quite what it seems to be, and odd angles with fish-eye lensing underscores that. Be it the certainty in some quarters of divine revelation, the problem of statistics when dealing with science, or Digger’s motives in keeping his company’s disapproving ecological expert, Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) close at hand, it’s an evolving concept and one that isn’t afraid to slap its audience out of any sense of complacency.
Is it subtle? Yes and no. Government meetings are composed entirely of old white men, filmed with a glow that renders them even paler as they sweat and swear their way to the apocalypse. They dissolve into laughter when one of them cautions the room that the non-existent ladies present might be offended by the rough language. No one laughs harder than the President, and Goodman shines as a glad hander who has run out of options, whose megalomania propels him into fantasies of being the Fisher King of America, only to be devastated to learn that the nuclear football requires reading books instead of merely pressing a button. But subplots involving missing daughters and unsuspected nephews speak to human nature in its complexity that will not allow us to feel smug about our own certainty about being on the right side of history or getting through a day without making a compromise or two.
DIGGER is unsparing and it needs to be yet still manages to be oddly enchanting in its pessimism. Rife with the wages of hubris and how easy it is to be swayed, even inspired, by the cynical self-interest of smooth talkers with lots of money, it doesn’t let anyone off the hook. And that’s why it’s pure genius.
Your Thoughts?