Digger movie review: After 30 years of defying gravity, Tom Cruise takes his biggest leap - The Indian Express

Digger movie review: Tom Cruise has been known for most of his career for his gravity-defying stunts. But in Digger, he not only touches down, but even picks up a shovel to excavate oil. If the Mission: Impossible franchise had him push the boundaries of human potential, he hits the rock bottom of the human vice in Alejanro Inarritu’s satire. The filmmaker could’ve easily mounted a survival thriller like The Revenant (2015) with Cruise, which fetched Leonardo DiCaprio his elusive maiden Academy Award. On the face of it, Digger also seems tailor-made for DiCaprio, whom we’ve seen explore greed in its grimy granularity in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). But after experiencing the film in full, one can validate that there couldn’t have been a more poetic fit for Digger Rockwell than Tom Cruise.

A third-generation oil tycoon, Rockwell spends even the most crisis-ridden day with blindfolded optimism. When his staff member informs him that drilling activities in Alaska have forced an iceberg to drift towards Europe with vengeance, he goes back to tending to his half-dead cat, refusing to believe that the world, just like his prized pet, is on the verge of collapse. Even when methane-induced fire projects out of thin ice, he doesn’t cease operations because his commitment to capitalism goes hand in hand with the lofty narrative of employment generation. It’s not until his problems become big, and the US President and White House officials come visiting, that he’s forced to confront the calamity in the making.

But Rockwell is not the kind of billionaire businessman who flees the country as soon as he smells trouble. He doesn’t wield the shovel as his weapon of choice so that he can bury his head into that hole. He digs out the truth and serves it to the people. Because for him, the truth isn’t just facts, but also the story. When he gets cornered by his truth, he pounces back by showing the mirror to the people who point fingers at him. He argues that they’re all complicit in the capitalistic, convenient way of life – and he’s just a means to that end. It’s how modern-day business works – when survival turns into a commodity, the truth becomes just a collateral.

Inarritu only stages the satire, sans offering any tangible solutions to the problems it’s highlighting. But he adds another layer to the proceedings – the satire being staged is actually a popular play being rehearsed in memory of the people lost in the same calamity that took place a couple of decades ago. Cruise actually plays Richard, an actor who plays Digger Rockwell, in that play. Like those who share the stage, he doesn’t miss a beat as the character, but once cut is called, he’s the first one to head back to the green room. The reason? His family has been subjected to long-term repercussions caused by the same calamity.

So, he eventually breaks out of character on stage and poses a pertinent question – why satire? Why not stare the truth in the eye and call it out for what it is, instead of going around in circles? Why inject laughter into the veins of those who’re still reeling under the effects of the PTSD caused by the calamity? Why entertain, when you can agitate? Because art, like life, is subject to interpretation, and that ambiguity runs the risk of deviating from the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

It’s then that the hitherto mysterious character of Kenny (Jesse Plemons) takes the spotlight and delivers an impassioned monologue. He argues that irrespective of how the artist and their art convey the truth, the bottomline is that the truth must be ultimately arrived at. Because it’s not just the artists who are telling stories, it’s also the politicians and the businessmen like Digger Rockwell. For their stories to not become the history, the artists must keep hitting at the wall and see what sticks, even if that’s satire. Plemons is phenomenal in that scene, making the most of the little screentime he’s allotted by the virtue of the mystery attached with his character.

Inarritu resorting to this story-within-a-story format, like he did in Birdman, may seem like a copout to many. Instead of suggesting solutions, he, like Rockwell, is making us complicit in buying a story. But with this approach, he also pens a moving love letter to the endurance and relevance of art – whether performing arts or cinema – which thrive because they give the audience the ending they deserved in real life. Yes, they’re escapist by their very nature, but they’re also life-affirming and thought-provoking at the same time. Like it’s the citizens who choose their leaders, it’s the audience who determine the tone of the arts they consume.

And a star like Tom Cruise has always been in service of his audience. Whether it’s running his bike off the cliff or skydiving from a chopper, he’s performed and survived them all. So, when it comes to trading that million-dollar face with the bloated one of Digger Rockwell, surrendering his ripped physique to a prosthetic potbelly or even sacrificing the myth of Tom Cruise to deliver an ugly truth, he does all of that with abandon. After defying gravity for 30 years, he takes his biggest leap with Digger, turning the brand he built over the past four-and-a-half decades on its head. Inarritu carries off a mission impossible – instead of capitalizing on Cruise’s unabating stardom, he leverages its absence of it to tell a striking story.

All the other actors are as much at par. Riz Ahmed plays Ganesh, a scientist and Rockwell’s chief advisor, who’s the sole voice of sanity in an otherwise overblown satire. He walks a tough tightrope deftly — to ground the truth, yet make it palatable even in the face of lies being sold as in colourful, entertaining, and plain convenient packaging. Special hurrah must go to John Goodman, who chews every scene he’s in as the US President. He channels the megalomaniac, dictatorial demagogues of today whose egos are more outsized than the nations they govern. He’s also the pinnacle of white dick energy who gawks at the glaring absence of women at White House.

Which explains why a gifted actor like Sandra Huller gets a short shrift in this satirical man’s world. She gives Cruise a run for his money (truckloads of it!) as Digger’s half-sister Emma, whose only route to relevance is by running a environmental organization, though oiling it with her brother’s money, still moist with the saliva of his greed. But even though she sees no redemption in this farcical world, we see her arc reach a satisfactory high in the conscientious son she raises. He course corrects his uncle’s damage by roping in a young Black director to stage the story of his white family’s unchecked greed.

Since Digger is Inarritu’s ode to the arts, each set of the film is crafted to perfection by production designer Dennis Gassner. Predator fur adorns Rockwell’s mansion, accentuating his subscription to the Darwanian idea of supremacy. The set changes seamlessly, like it does in a thorough stage production, from a luxurious yet old-world mansion to a raw yet futuristic green room to a dystopian yet functional cityscape. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and editors Conor O’Neill and Stephen Mirrione work in tandem to breathe both life and stillness into the long shots, a la Birdman. Background score is on point too, with Cosmo Sheldrake often using the ticking of a grandfather clock and dripping from a leaking roof to underline the urgency — of the self-sabotaging stakeholders of the world as well as the actors performing against the sands of time. That’s probably why Tom Cruise has realized now that just defying gravity won’t suffice as an artist. He needs to keep his ear to the ground and act in his best capacity before the world as we know it goes down in flames.