At this point nothing I or anyone else says can save “Digger.” The very expensive new movie starring Tom Cruise and directed by a guy who has won two Best Director Oscars has already been written off as one of the year’s biggest box office catastrophes.
To this you may shrug and say, “Who cares?” But there’s more going on here than just another Hollywood flop. Enough that even with everything else afflicting the world, it’s worth pausing for a moment to examine this wreckage. Mainly because in an entertainment/artistic world that genuflects to well-trod formulas, “Digger” is not just very much out of the ordinary — defiantly so, to its own commercial peril — it is the exceedingly rare (very) big Hollywood studio movie, with a very big star, that is trying to both say and do something unusual.
For non-film fans who’ve paid no attention, “Digger”, at first glance, is a kind of satiric disaster film about the world’s richest tycoon — played by Cruise in heavy, fat old man makeup — who sets off an environmental cataclysm when one of his oil wells explodes and sends a giant ice shelf crashing into northern Europe. Prior to its release last Friday, the Warner Brothers’ publicity machine, (clearly stumped at how to sell the thing), was describing it as, “Dr. Strangelove for climate change.”
That comparison might have prepared audiences for the manic, over-the-top caricatures populating the story. But it clearly did little to set the stage for how the film is actually constructed and everything else, beyond outrage over planetary climate collapse, that the film wants us to think and talk about.
Reviews have been 80% merciless. “Pretentious”. “Clueless.” “Self-indulgent.” Even as many have conceded that Cruise and director Alejandro Inarritu, (“Birdman”, “The Revenant” are his best known films) have shown admirable ambition and, “taken a big swing”, as so many have put it. Many of the harshest critics though have asked who exactly the film was made for?
To that I raised my hand.
But I’m an example of the kind of audience studio bosses regard as the nerd sub-culture. A crowd wildly out of touch with the masses who might deliver a profit on a $175 million budget.
True enough.
The guiding maximum of show biz is, ‘Give the people what they want.” (This plays in hand with the anachronistic admonition, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.”) What most people want in a night at the movies is escapism in some form. A story that is exciting, sexy, mysterious, scary and/or driven by characters they admire and want to be on some level.
The same applies to art in general. People strolling an art gallery may have a higher tolerance for “pretention” and “self indulgence”, but they too seek beauty in composition, balance and artistic daring. However, very few modern art installations come with a $175 million production budget.
As one of the nerdy insufferables who go to movies hoping for something unique and provocative, something that pushes my mind in unexpected directions as I watch, I found plenty to appreciate and admire in Cruise and Inarritu’s “big swing.” Even after the big “twist”/“rug pull” 40 minutes into the film, I remained intrigued with how they were going to pay off such a startling narrative conceit in under two hours.
Moreover, IMHO, all the individual facets of high caliber filmmaking — the craft of film art, if you will — are first rate. From the cinematography by three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, to the script, to the production design and most of all, in Cruise’s performance, all the boxes got checked for superior workmanship.
Cruise in particular.
The guy fully comprehends how to maintain an audience’s attention. He’s excellent here – alert and responsive, signaling distress, panic and confusion in close-ups — while also being hilarious in physical comedy. It’s a terrific performance.
The dilemma though for opening weekend box office returns is in the film’s shift from the Strangelovian disaster flick we (sort of) expected to the “meta” layer, in which Inarritu nudges us to play with the question of what role art — in any form — serves in the context of grand human calamities? If art has value, and many of us like/hope to think it does, how is its impact felt most and digested best by audiences?
My guess is that “What is art’s role” wasn’t something Inarritu oversold to Warner Brothers. “A Strangelovian farce with Tom Cruise!” was the more likely elevator pitch.
Scanning the present landscape, and noting all the lunacies, frauds, indifference to posterity and … artlessness … something like “Digger” offers an opportunity to engage in a conversation about something other than a “thumbs up”, “thumbs down” on escapist entertainment. Not that many will take that opportunity right now.
Inarritu’s buddy, fellow Mexican director Guillermo del Toro has rallied to the film’s defense, noting that there’s a long list of movies now regarded as classics that were similarly panned on release. “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “The Shining” and “Blade runner” among them. And I don’t find it inconceivable that that could happen with “Digger.”
But for this moment, it’s a commercial disaster. The people did not get what they thought they wanted. If it ever comes, appreciation will be a dish served cold.
Such are the perils of the art game.
This essay was originally published at the Substack Brian Lambert MN.
