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Tom Cruise takes aim at American capitalism in Digger
THERE is something deeply satisfying about watching Tom Cruise play a billionaire so convinced of his own importance that he cannot comprehend the destruction he has caused.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger is a vicious satire of American capitalism, fossil-fuel greed and a political establishment more interested in protecting wealthy men than the people suffering under them.
Given how thoroughly it ridicules the institutions America holds dear, the hostile reception from some American critics is hardly surprising. The film is loud, excessive and occasionally exhausting, but much of that feels appropriate for the people it is mocking.
A disaster within a play
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an ageing Texas oil magnate whose reckless drilling in Greenland sets off an ecological catastrophe. When an enormous ice shelf threatens to devastate Europe, Digger and US President Compson (John Goodman) respond with the kind of calculation one might expect from men who treat human lives as another entry on a balance sheet.
At first, Digger appears to be a relatively straightforward disaster comedy. Then a malfunction exposes the whole thing as a stage production called Fossil Fools. Cruise, it turns out, is playing Curtis Markson, an actor portraying Rockwell in what must be one of the most extravagantly expensive plays ever conceived.
That reveal is where the film becomes genuinely fascinating. Just as audiences begin adjusting to the idea that everything they have watched is theatre, Iñárritu pulls another trick – the horrors being staged actually happened.
The absurdity is an artistic reconstruction of a reality so grotesque that exaggeration barely seems necessary.
There is something distinctly Birdman-like about this arrangement, with Iñárritu once again examining performance, performance and the strange relationship between art and real life.
The layers keep multiplying and each revelation makes the previous one more unsettling.
Cruise cuts loose
Cruise is magnificent in a role far removed from his usual globe-trotting action heroes.
Buried beneath prosthetics, he bellows, sneers and charms his way through the film with an enthusiasm reminiscent of his Les Grossman appearance in Tropic Thunder. The resemblance is mostly in his willingness to look ridiculous – Rockwell is a far nastier creation.
His finest moment comes during a lengthy, seemingly uninterrupted address to a European assembly. Rockwell argues that the world cannot condemn him for supplying the oil on which its modern lifestyles depend.
For nearly ten minutes, Cruise makes the billionaire’s defence sound alarmingly persuasive. The pale, almost corpse-like faces surrounding him make the scene feel like a gathering of people already living through the end of civilisation.
Goodman is equally memorable as a decrepit president whose post-surgery delirium turns nuclear warfare into a racist, delusional rant reminiscent of a certain orange-coloured world leader. His talk of attacking China is hilarious and at the same time, terrifying. The Trump parallels are hardly subtle, nor do they need to be.
A feast for the senses
Visually, Digger is astonishing. The elaborate theatrical interiors have the composition of paintings, with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki giving even the ugliest political exchanges a striking grandeur.
The sound design, however, is peculiar. Background noises frequently seem as loud as whatever is happening directly in front of the camera, producing a relentless wall of sound that can become distracting.
The film’s theatrical presentation also complements its increasingly ridiculous characters. Everything is exaggerated, from the enormous sets to the behaviour of the wealthy and powerful.
It is a world where political leaders behave like caricatures, although their real-life counterparts sometimes make such portrayals appear restrained.
Laughing towards extinction
The movie’s biggest provocation arrives at the end. After watching an elaborate production about planetary destruction, an audience applauds, congratulates itself and walks back into a world already devastated by the very systems the play condemned.
That ending exposes the limits of satire itself. People can laugh at corrupt leaders, praise a brilliant piece of political art and leave the theatre feeling enlightened. Like any of that will ever stop the next catastrophe.
Iñárritu has little patience for the billionaire class or the Christofascism that helps preserve its power. Yet his bleakest observation is directed at the rest of us: We keep allowing these people to decide what happens next.
Digger may be bombastic, self-indulgent and determined to hammer its message home. It is also captivating, bitterly funny and angry about something worth being angry about.
Its most disturbing suggestion is that by the time everybody understands the joke, there may be nothing left to save.
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