A throwback to Birdman and a homage to Dr. Strangelove, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu returns with his eco satire DIGGER, starring Tom Cruise in the title role.
Like Birdman, DIGGER is a narrative within a narrative and one of the through lines in the movie is control of the narrative, something the filmmaker is not fully in command of.
Birdman was subtitled The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, DIGGER has no such appellation. Maybe it should. Perhaps The Unnecessary Coupling of Narratives.
Ecology and economy rub up against against each other, digging into the hole humanity has made for itself, creating an industrial revolution that has impacted on the natural environment.
Cruise shovels up the showmanship, a Slim Pickens Stetson wearing mining billionaire, called Rockwell, who calls oil Mother Nature’s milk, doesn’t give a fuck about fracking and is happy to take on the woke folk at the United Nations in defence of rampant capitalism.
Quite a good reason to see DIGGER is the impressive supporting cast. John Goodman is wonderfully droll as the United States President happy to drill Alaska and Greenland. He’s not happy that he may be remembered as the President who wrecked the planet or that he is suffering from cancer of the rectum.
Riz Ahmed as Ganesh, the scientist whose predictions of massive ice shelf damage and its impending disaster, who was tasked the thankless role of thinking the unthinkable and thrashed for acknowledging the truth in the probability, gives a performance rich in subtlety and nuance.
Sophie Wilde as a theatre director, and Robert John Burke as hawkish United States Army general who shares aggressive jingoistic DNA with Buck Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove, are absolute standouts.
DIGGER is visually stunning, not surprisingly as the cinematographer is three time Academy Award Winner, Emmanuel Lubezki, who shot Birdman and The Revenant. Like Birdman, there are long continuous takes, a fluidity of depth and movement that are technically brilliant.
Production design is by Oscar winner Dennis Gassner with costumes by five time Oscar nominee Jacqueline West are as much stars of the show as the actors.
A showcase for Cruise for sure, but DIGGER doesn’t have the emotional gravitas to go with the existential territory that Birdman had in spades. Ya dig?
