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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 a 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.
I really appreciate you revealing the twist, because up until now I had only seen media that didn't mention that point and had been very confused about how this could possibly be seen as good.
I had to pause the trailer halfway because it felt like it was an AI-generated trailer trying to make a joke I didn't get, and only resumed when I was sure it was a real movie.
So the reveal that this is intended is somewhat of a relief, in that it's "Hollywood is trying to do something clever that didn't really work" as opposed to "Hollywood actually thought this was good".
But ultimately this is just "I was only pretending to be retarded", where I'm not sure why it should matter to me the moviegoer that they wanted to make a bad movie. And I have to imagine some of the reason it's bombing is that a lot of people are not going to look past the base impression.
Which is funny because it speaks to some myopia on the part of Hollywood. If the public is giving movie creators some latitude and going "well no, this can't actually be that bad" they'll at least get to the main point, which presumably the creators thought was good. But that's probably not how the public is viewing new movie releases these days, and as a result it lives or dies on the perception of the thing it wanted to be deliberately bad. And unless someone spends a bunch of time looking into it later, it will just be another point supporting that Hollywood is cranking out loads of terrible movies.
This is a movie that years ago I would have been excited for. I generally like commercial movies that trend towards the artsy side and have something interesting to say - as opposed to just mindless movie fun.
The problem is that I’ve been burned too much lately. I went into One Battle After Another with an open mind and as a big PTA fan. I don’t know what exactly it is, but I just can’t handle such heavy handed messaging and themes that I profoundly disagree with. There was a time where I could appreciate a thoughtful film for its artistry, despite the fact that it was messaging something I disagree with. Maybe the current crop of these movies are just less skillfully executing on the idea. Maybe it’s me - I have become more radicalized over the past 10 years.
Either way, I don’t even want to see Digger because the best case scenario is that I leave the theater, reflect on it, and find the whole thing distasteful. That’s what happened to me with OBAA. I was moderately entertained in the theater, but after reflecting on it for 5 minutes in the car on the way home I just kept thinking about all the things I didn’t like about the movie, what it was saying and the overwhelming critical praise it was getting.
Yeah, and I find it genuinely hard to believe that the critical praise is not in large part due to how it makes critics who agree with the messaging feel smart. I too enjoy watching something that makes me feel smart; that doesn't mean it's artistically worthwhile.
Would today's critics be able to praise something like "Birth of a Nation"? It's been "baked in" by previous generations of critics who could now so they don't really have a choice but to praise that one, but a new movie like it.
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