To film Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s new movie “Digger,” a satirical black comedy about an aging oil tycoon facing a potentially apocalyptic crisis he fathered, Tom Cruise needed extensive prosthetics — six hours of prosthetics, to be exact. Upholding his reputation as the most intense person in any room, Cruise has proudly touted that, by encouraging the makeup artists (and running drills with them using a stopwatch), they worked the entire process down from six hours to less than one. As this is basically unheard of, the anecdote plays great on a press tour. But Cruise’s story is also an ironic reflection of “Digger”: an undeniably ambitious project whose assuredness belies a stubborn disregard for everyone but itself.
Typically, that kind of thing isn’t so bad in a movie. More filmmakers would do well to be so confident in their vision that they successfully tune out intrusive thoughts about what anyone else will think, refusing to dull their boldest ideas and temper their biggest swings. But “Digger” complicates this certitude, weaving its audience into the fabric of its story so tightly that they’re bound to their seat, forced to sit with their eyes peeled open as Iñárritu points his finger back at them. His thematic concepts and narrative red herrings rely on the viewer’s presence. Without us, there is no one to hoist blame upon when the film reveals its layers, no one to compare to the film’s wide-eyed spectators of global collapse.
