Digger: An Oscar-Worthy Turn from a Latexed Tom Cruise in Iñárritu’s Disaster Satire
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A
Tom Cruise turns in a career best performance in Oscar winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s brilliantly challenging and risky satire Digger.
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an immensely wealthy and powerful man, owner of Rockwell Oil, who is, along with the American President, trying to manipulate events after an environmental catastrophe with severe global implications.
Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) as Rockwell and Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) in Digger.
But, that’s not all that’s going on in Digger: Given that this is Iñárritu, expect surprises, both narratively, and stylistically. Iñárritu starts us in one place and then switches things up: presenting us with what we expect from a character like Digger and then turning that on its head, challenging our perceptions.
Yes, he’s satirizing the ultra rich and powerful, the carelessness and choices made in the name of profit. But that’s the easy part. It’s not the totality of the film’s message.
With this swirling shifting narrative that takes us in unexpected places, we’re also asked to take a good look at ourselves. The film asks us to think about who we are, what we believe, and it isn’t afraid to be absurd and unapologetic along the way.
Digger Rockwell lives alone, in his mansion. And under layers of latex, Cruise plays him as a movie cliche of an American oilman. There’s the undefined Southern accent, the assured way of speaking, and the bravado and ego of a successful man who does what he wants.
Blinded by business, he’s ignored emails about a very dangerous methane leak in the North that is causing environmental damage and threatening worse.
By the time he calls in his top advisor, scientist Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), the worst has happened. Without getting too spoilery it involves a glacier.
The American President Compson, (John Goodman), the Vice President (Michael Stuhlbarg), and other high ranking officials are on their way to meet with Digger to figure out how to stop or mitigate the disaster. And failing that, they hope to seize the narrative to make sure that the blowback from voters and the affected international community doesn't come back on them.
The scenes with the cabinet are darkly humourous, and comparisons to the apocalyptic absurdity of Dr. Strangelove are inevitable. Iñárritu isn’t afraid to lean into the absurd, and boy, does he ever here. Goodman’s President is an extreme caricature, arguably to a garish and distracting degree. But he makes it work through his appeal and strength as an actor.
The members of his cabinet likewise fall into categories - the weak kneed vice president, the rigid, angry military leader, the no-name cabinet member who carries a Bible and speaks in tongues.
Digger, the character, isn’t swept up by this. He keeps going forward, trying to wrangle the narrative his way. And as things develop, the film takes us into unexpected territory.
Iñárritu has lots to say, but he needed the right collaborator. Much of the film rides on Cruise’s performance, which asks more from him than we’ve seen in his action movies.
A consummate movie star, Cruise has a repertoire of moves and reactions that are the same from movie to movie: facial expressions, the way he uses his voice, etc. But the latex that changes his face, and flabs up his body, forces more from him -- and for us. This could be his year to win an Oscar, and it would be deserved.
Still, this is Iñárritu’s film. He’s a brainy director with a philosophical and mystical bent, drawn to making movies that ask deep questions that he doesn’t necessarily answer.
HIs strength as a storyteller won him back-to-back directing Oscars for The Revenant and the less conventionally structured Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), both of which also won the Best Motion Picture of the Year.
And it's given him confidence to hone a style that is his own, dipping in and out of the main storyline, and sometimes in and out of reality. But he never loses control of the material, or the emotional core of what he's doing.
Iñárritu is a literate Renaissance man, inspired as much by his Mexican roots as he is by music, and movies, including mainstream Hollywood films. On the Latino side, he’s heavily influenced by the Boom literary movement, that mixes non-linear storytelling, multiple perspectives, magical realism, and socio-political issues.
It’s satire, but arguably not cynicism that we’re seeing in his work. In fact, you could argue there’s a spiritual element to the questions he’s asking about how we think.
Digger appears to challenge the larger world, the world of power that seems disconnected from cause and effect, from the natural world, and the world of ordinary people.
But in the end, Iñárritu brings it back to the audience, to us. Are we willing to take a look at ourselves and question our own perceptions?
Either way Digger is a hell of a ride.
Digger. Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, starring Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg. In theatres Friday, Oct. 2.