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I saw Alejandro Innauruatu’s new film, Digger. I think it’s one of the better movies I’ve seen in a while. Maybe in this decade. It’s overtly political in multiple ways, enough to talk about it here rather than the Friday Fun Thread.
The movie is about Digger Rockwell, an eccentric third generation oil company executive who cuts a rather Trumpian figure. Digger is a friend of the president, and a close enough one to make him effectively an unofficial member of the cabinet.
When one of Digger’s drilling rigs in Greenland explodes, it send a massive ice shelf (named Judy) heading towards Europe. It’s loosely based on the Thwaites glacier nightmare scenario that keeps climate scientists up at night. Digger, the President, and Digger’s reluctant head of environmental safety must try to avert the crisis. The whole thing has a tone somewhere between Dr. Stranglove and your average Wes Anderson movie. Digger and his pals unfortunately fail to stop the iceberg, and the planet is rendered semi-uninhabitable. Millions perish.
The “twist” is revealed early, about 20 minutes in. We are not watching the “real” Digger, or President Compson. We are watching a satirical stage play based on the real events, called Fossil Fools. The play premiered off-broadway five to ten years after the real events, and the big budget revival we’re seeing is about twenty years after that. Tom Cruise is Curtis Markson, a well respected stage and screen actor portraying Digger Rockwell. Markson is becoming concerned that the truth of the real man’s complicated character and legacy is getting sanded off in favor of cheap sneers.
It’s an interesting movie. On the one hand it is very much about global warming and the climate crisis. And its opinions on climate change are nuanced and deep, and wouldn’t be out place in an effort-post here. But it’s more about how people pass from living breathing people into historical heroes and villains in the pages of history books.
It also gives Cruise the chance to do performance that is simultaneously huge and very subtle. And it’s beautifully shot movie, worth seeing in theaters or IMAX. I would have liked to have worked on this post more, but it’s rapidly falling out of theaters and I’m trying to get the word out.
It's an interesting movie with an interesting popular reaction. Digger is currently on pace to be one of the biggest financial bombs of all time, at least Top 5, maybe Top 3. But critics like it, and it seems like the Reddit/Twitter film crowd love it.
I didn't like it. 3/10. I have two big problems with Digger:
Even if you like the ultimate thematic payoff, the journey there isn't worth it. About 2 hours of this 2.5 hour movie is annoying cartoon people screaming at each other as ridiculous straw men of the elites. It is very much in the mode of Don't Look Up. It's occasionally amusing, but mostly annoying, and for a movie with so much dialogue, I found it all very surface level stuff about how people are (supposedly) lazy, irresponsible, and letting our planet get destroyed by (leftist) environmentalist concerns. Maybe I just don't like satire in general, it always reminds of the meme where a strawman just shouts opinions in a funny/stupid voice.
I find the ultimate thematic thrust somewhere between muddled and banal. It seems like the ultimate point of the movie is to say that making satirical art about evil elites doesn't stop elites from being evil. Which... yes, that's true, but who doesn't know that? It seems like the movie was directed at the extremely small group of self-important pretentious people who think that Don't Look Up and Dr. Strangelove can change the course of history.
I give the film credit for its weirdness, some really good visuals, and that they spent almost $200 million on an arthouse movie, but still. Didn't like it. It's very pretentious and not as smart as it thinks it is.
I would assert that is in fact a pretty large group of self-important pretentious people.
But they are also the least likely to either notice and absorb the criticism, or take the criticism to heart in the slightest.
Which is maybe what makes the movie actually brilliant. "This is a message movie about the inefficacy of message movies, executed to the highest artistic standards with the biggest budget and the greatest actors... and it still won't change anyone's mind."
Ultimate self-awareness and commitment to the bit.
(I have not seen it)
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