Alejandro G. Iñárritu | 2hr 8min
Alejandro G. Iñárritu is all too aware how insignificant his film is in the face of cataclysmic climate disaster. Political satire may have its place in grasping the existential absurdity of our self-destruction, though no amount of mockery can undo the damage of rising sea levels or extreme weather events. The best any artist can do is give form to the incomprehensible scale of our predicament, sublimating communal despair into some creative expression that can be shared, argued over, and absorbed with bitter laughter.
How appropriate then that Iñárritu should stage his darkly comedic caricatures against such conspicuously theatrical backdrops in Digger, taking a leaf from Stanley Kubrick to skewer the world’s most powerful men in the farcical vein of Dr. Strangelove. The world that oil baron Digger Rockwell inhabits is as imposing as the billionaire himself, its vast, immaculate sets distorted through wide-angle lenses that similarly elongate and shrink characters into decorative ornaments. Here, the whimsical dioramas of Wes Anderson are filtered through the muted pastels, low contrast, and deep focus cinematography of Roy Andersson, effectively washing out characters into pallid corpses. Even landscapes viewed from giant windows in Digger’s mansion appear totally artificial, as though mounted on his wall alongside those animal skulls and antlers that proudly announce his dominion over the natural world.
Even when one of Digger’s mining projects suddenly explodes and sends a colossal ice shelf drifting towards the west coast of Europe, Iñárritu keeps a Brechtian distance from the apocalyptic reality of the situation, inviting us to laugh rather than grieve. Millions are going to die, we are told, yet as our bombastic hero meets with President Compson and his cabinet of bumbling sycophants, it is jarring just how crudely their priorities are lampooned. Once their initial concern for profit margins gives way to panic, they can only watch helplessly as the world falls to biblical tsunamis, screaming and retching at the consequences of their own hubris. Iñárritu’s sense of humour is not exactly subtle in Digger – yet with a seismic formal shift roughly half an hour in, his broad theatrics are deftly recontextualised.
To describe these layers of irony in too much detail however would be to ruin the film’s greatest trick, as well as its ingenious formal backbone. The story of Digger’s annihilation and attempted rescue of the world would certainly make for a hilarious comedy, though it is the far bleaker undercurrent which loads its satire with such cynical dread. The swaggering, drawling, larger-than-life tycoon who sets his own downfall in motion is certainly a joy to despise, yet the “seductive psychopath” mentioned in passing seems hints at a far more insidious menace, largely obscured by boisterous physical gags. As such, Digger finds no delusions in its social and environmental prognosis. Those who recklessly plunder the world’s resources easily justify their excesses, and even after the damage is done, their successors merely learn to hide their malice behind acts of apparent altruism.
This tension between humour and tragedy runs right down the middle of Tom Cruise’s performance, and it is a thrill to see him once again stretching his range in bold, unglamorous roles outside action franchises. Beneath a paunchy belly, thinning hair, and ageing prosthetics, he projects the brash charisma of a businessman who believes himself a modern-day cowboy, prepared to save the world from the catastrophe he has wrought upon it. His miserable, decrepit cat may be the only living creature he truly cares for, yet even that affection is warped by vanity, cruelly prolonging its life far beyond its natural span. Given President Compson’s terminal illness as well, it appears that everything within Digger’s orbit is condemned to a protracted, painful death, and the Earth itself is no exception.
Of course, this monstrous ego would never so readily accept blame for a global disaster of his own making – that much is evident when he is summoned to testify before the European Parliament, only to turn the platform against his accusers in a scathing, self-absorbed indictment of everyone but himself. “I drill because it is offered to me. I drill because I want to win,” he bellows in his red cowboy suit, glowering against a pale green sea of jeering bureaucrats. Cruise has not had a scene this electrifying since his infamous seminars in Magnolia, and it is clear he has not lost his oratory gift, theatrically exposing the comfortable masses as willing participants in his empire like some mad capitalist prophet.
With cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki behind the camera as well, this scene’s tracking shots give ample room for Cruise’s feral showmanship, though such madcap maximalism is not restricted to a single scene. As if breaking his stage free from the boundaries of its proscenium arch, Iñárritu’s visual imagination continues to expand on an epic scale, contrasting the sterile compositions of Digger’s artificial world against the grimy disorder of what lies beyond. Those methane bubbles rising through the film’s opening shot become a foreboding motif of ecological instability, while even Cosmo Sheldrake’s off-kilter score of tuned percussion imitates the sound of dripping water, suggesting a natural world slipping beyond human control.
It is no wonder why many have walked out during screenings, particularly given how radically Digger diverges from the film its marketing promises, but even its harshest critics would struggle to dispute the impeccable craftsmanship on display. By those standards, it succeeds brilliantly – though not even Iñárritu is foolish enough to presume that such marvellous artistic invention can save us. Perhaps it serves as a cathartic balm to the anxious mind, yet while we indulge in bread and circuses, he painfully reminds us of our collective complicity. For all Iñárritu’s marvellous narrative twists in Digger, none land as hauntingly as his final shot, and as his camera pans across the film’s bleakest, most hideous truth, we too are reluctantly returned to our own deteriorating world.
Digger is currently playing in theatres.
