This article references major plot points in the film Digger, which is currently in cinemas.
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which → reference → cinemas
After just a week in cinemas, Digger is well on its way to setting the kind of benchmark no film aspires to.
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film → set → benchmark
In a year when cinema finally appears to be regaining some of its mojo thanks to a string of hits such as The Odyssey and the latest all-conquering Spider-Man offering, the climate-change satire from Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu is a reminder that there’s still room for monumental flops.
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satire → appear → flops
In Australia, the film opened on 335 screens and took just $791,368 over the weekend, finishing in eighth place.
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film → open → place
By way of comparison, Brad Pitt’s Heart of the Beast played on 336 screens and took almost twice as much ($1.511 million) to finish third in its second outing.
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Heart → play → outing
It’s the same story elsewhere, too.
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It → ’ → ?
In the US, Digger opened to about $US7.5 million ($10.7 million), a dismal result for a movie with a production budget reported to be somewhere between $US125 million and $US180 million.
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Digger → open → budget
Already it is predicted that it will be one of the biggest financial disasters in the business in decades.
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it → predict → decades
There are many reasons audiences and critics have failed to warm to this tale of global warming.
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audiences → be → warming
But one of the key points of contention is the way the film breaks the fourth wall.
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film → break → wall
For two of our Culture writers, this is actually the point at which they diverge in their response to the film – Nell Geraets finding this the point at which it tips into disaster, and Karl Quinn believing it is the point at which the film finally comes good.
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film → diverge → which
Here, they debate the pros and cons of that fault line.
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they → debate → line
The first 20 minutes of Digger surprised me – not because of how bad it was, but because of how much I actually enjoyed it.
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I → surprise → it
While most people bristled at Cruise’s bombastic depiction of the wealthy oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, I was smiling ear-to-ear.
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I → bristle → ear
Cruise throws all inhibition out the window, his enjoyment practically oozing off the screen.
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enjoyment → throw → screen
Finally, this all-American action hero, known best as Ethan Hunt from the Mission: Impossible franchise, is playing a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad guy – one who sports a potbelly, bald spot and creepy cocaine fingernail.
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who → know → potbelly
Before you start grumbling, I’m aware he rocked a bald patch in Tropic Thunder too.
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he → start → Thunder
By the time he whipped out the ridiculously fake dying cat in a diaper, I was convinced.
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I → whip → diaper
The blatantly misogynistic jokes from John Goodman’s US president and a vomiting episode from his useless government cronies simply convinced me further.
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jokes → vomit → me
I’ve always enjoyed balls-to-the-wall self-aware stupidity on-screen (think Zoolander and Burn After Reading), and this is certainly that.
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this → enjoy → Reading
We’re meant to despise these over-privileged characters – the vastly underqualified leaders we’re expected to trust in the face of climate catastrophe – and boy, do we.
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we → mean → catastrophe
I kept wanting to like the Tropic Thunder-ishness of Cruise’s performance, but I struggled to tally his OTT acting style with Iñárritu’s clear intention to say something about a Very Serious Topic.
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I → keep → Topic
Things got a little better as Goodman entered the fray – OK, we’re clearly in the realm of farce – and the wide-angle lenses, washed out palette and general sense of something being a little
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something → get → farce
I couldn’t fault Cruise for effort – I mean, he really is the hardest working man in showbiz (sorry, James Brown) – but he’s not a natural comedian.
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he → fault → showbiz
In Tropic Thunder, he was surrounded by genuinely funny people; here, he’s doing most of the work, and you can really sense the effort.
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you → surround → effort
And that’s not funny at all.
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that → ’ → ?
But every gag in Digger has a deeply sinister undertone – it’s about the planet’s impending doom, after all – and I thought Cruise mastered that.
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Cruise → have → that
There’s already something a little sinister about Cruise anyway (maybe it’s the Scientology of it all), so every time he cracked a joke or pulled a face, my laughter was paired with shivers down the spine.
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laughter → ’ → spine
For me, the film’s true crime lies in its meta narrative.
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crime → lie → narrative
Iñárritu can’t seem to get enough of it, first with Birdman, then Bardo and now Digger – could we just remain grounded in one reality for a change?
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we → seem → change
While Cruise and Goodman admire the intentionally garish set beyond a window, a tree falls, and a giant man appears from the ground to reposition it.
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man → admire → it
Everything halts.
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Everything → halt → ?
It was at this point that my entire experience flipped on its head, as I realised this wasn’t a movie; it was a movie of a play, fiction within fiction.
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it → flip → fiction
Such an abrasive tonal shift rattled me, to the point that I practically mourned the over-the-top character farce I’d been enjoying up until the damn tree.
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I → rattle → tree
The film lost all momentum, trapping us inside a stuffy backstage area with a stifled actor instead of roaming freely within Digger’s wild, gaudy universe – a universe in which we were free to ridicule and laugh at the characters.
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we → lose → characters
Despite the obvious symbolism of a tree being knocked over by a human hand, this wasn’t the key transition moment for me.
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this → knock → me
But it started to unlock the movie’s central conceit, which is foreshadowed from almost the first moment, when we see Digger wake up in his bed in front of a massive window with a frame that makes the lush nature scene beyond look like a painting.
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scene → start → painting
It says something about the fetishisation of nature as a thing to be framed, curated, tamed and owned.
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It → say → thing
Sure, it’s symbolism galore.
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it → ’ → ?
But this film was ultimately marketed as a “comedy of catastrophic proportions”.
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film → market → proportions
…and 25 more, not listed.
The Aporia
