ടോം ക്രൂയിസിന്റെ ഡിഗർ: കാലാവസ്ഥാ പ്രതിസന്ധിയെ പരിഹസിക്കുന്ന വിചിത്രമായ സിനിമാനുഭവം

In the run-up to Digger’s release, a stray theory caught on that Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film might be a stealth musical. It was a sizeable enough rumour that the studio actually issued a disclaimer that it wasn't. I was reminded of this at the end of an elaborate sequence, the centrepiece of the film in many ways, in which oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) is addressing a European Parliament of sorts. He starts off conciliatory and ends up combative, enraging his audience to the point that they stop yelling and start singing “blah blah blah blah blah”.

Even when there’s music, Digger is an aggressively unmusical film. It’s all stops and starts, lurches and stumbles, Dutch angles and extreme closeups. Iñárritu and his longtime cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki give everything a ghostly white pallor; with a decrepit, balding Tom Cruise in almost every scene, it feels like the ghost of capitalisms past. Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning Birdman was scored and performed to perpetual aggressive rhythms, yet had no intrinsic rhythm of its own. Digger, on the other hand, feels purposely ungainly, world-is-ending vaudeville on a $160 million budget.

On one of Digger’s many oil rigs in Greenland, a methane leak results in an explosion that causes a large ice shelf to break off. The magnate is informed by Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), a scientist in his employ, that ‘Judy’ is on a collision course with Europe, though there’s a chance it might be carried away from land and melt in the sea. US President Compson (John Goodman) is summoned and there’s a crisis meeting with the Digger, Ganesh, the chiefs of staff, the vice president (Michael Stuhlbarg) and the president’s priest. Their decision, in essence, is to do nothing: it’ll either be a near miss and no one will care, or it’ll be Europe’s problem.

This is Strangelovian satire in both tenor and staging, but with all the edge of a butter knife. There's nothing shocking about the film's political scenarios—reality is simply moving too fast now for this kind of knowing farce. One of Digger’s many headaches is his sick (and weirdly animatronic) cat, an overwrought metaphor for a world that’s just about clinging on. In the reality of this film, the climate crisis had reached the point of frequent catastrophe. Digger is one of the root causes, unchecked, unrepentant, unscientific, a fitting archvillain for the Trump era (even if it’s set years after our present).

For the second time this fortnight, I have no choice but to discuss a major plot development, both for what it says about the film’s ambitions and how it fits into Iñárritu’s oeuvre. After the situation room meeting, Digger and Compson continue talking in another room. As they gaze out over a green vista, they're interrupted by a voice calling for better timing on a falling tree. We're now shown that we’ve been watching the dress rehearsal of an ambitious stage production, a play called ‘Fossil Fools’. Digger is being played by an actor called Curtis Markson, who’s bristling against the over-the-top spin he’s been asked to put on the character. At least the fake cat makes sense.

Here, at least, is proper risk-taking. But as this parallel plot progresses, it becomes clear that it has little emotional resonance with the play. Rather, Iñárritu opts for the most literal-minded connection: Curtis’ daughter is on a flight that’s gone missing due to extreme weather. It’s a baffling decision; the scenes from ‘Fossil Fools’ are so much worse now that we’re aware of Curtis’ (and Iñárritu’s?) contempt for them. There’s a lot of Birdman in Digger: the woozy, meandering camera of Lubezki, the self-reflexive games, pity for the poor artist stuck in the maw of commerce (the reveal about the play’s financing is one of the film’s better dark jokes). The difference is the gimmick then was the one-shot illusion, and now it’s Cruise.

You have to go back to the mid-2000s to find Cruise in non-franchise, non-blockbuster parts. Digger Rockwell is the most transparent movie-star-wants-to-be-taken-seriously-again role: big accent, tons of makeup, winding monologues. Is it a good performance? Inasmuch as the film makes it difficult to concentrate on anything, I don’t think it is. I felt nothing for Digger, neither pity nor contempt nor grudging admiration, and I’m betting the film was hoping to elicit all three. In the days since the film’s release, there’s a small but vocal minority—including some of Iñárritu’s director friends—arguing that the problem is the film community’s diminished appetite for risk. It’s the easiest excuse: the viewer isn’t ready. The film goes out on a limb, so it must be relevant. Prescient. Ahead of its time. Blah blah blah blah blah.