So, the thing is, guys, I was in it.
Right at the end, during the credits, my friend and I walk along this platform, on the far left of the screen. Guy with light blue anorak? That's my friend and now-collaborator Lewis Ama, and next to him, with the short hair? That's me, for real. I'm sure you can also find us both in the scene just prior.
So, you see, dear aficionados - I already knew the twist. I didn't know they'd reveal it so early, or that it would evolve so often through the story - I just knew where we would end up, because I had to be the people ending up there.
Do I think Digger is simple? Yes. Do I think it reinvented the cinematic and structural political efficacy of film? No. Do I think Iñárritu made this "for my generation" as he claims? No, and I have my reasons for thinking this that I won't get into.
I think he made it for himself – a disillusioned Gen X who's had to watch the world go to shit despite endless warnings. That's enough - he doesn't have to make it grand to make it good, and actually, one might argue, that's kind of the beauty of it.
Digger is the film our progressive parents need, so they can laugh and cry about what's happened. This is not a crime. There are references to everything they've had to watch in horror, fascination and schadenfreude states for decades, with the George Bush shoe being a phenomenal touch. For them, this is their "Fossil Fools", something they need as catharsis. It's not here to save the world. Cinema cannot save us from the billionaires, and one might argue that cinema being co-opted by the billionaires makes any statement anyone tries to make functionally moot.
Tom Cruise does well in his performance – albeit a little hard to understand him in character, but that's the point – and I would say the star is Riz Ahmed, who put in work on this one. Goodman was fantastic, and everyone else dialled in their ridiculousness well. This film will indeed, as the critics say, stand the test of time.
The thing is – if you think the film is trying to save you, you've already stopped listening. If you think it's trying to achieve something, you've already assumed too much. This is a boondoggle for boondoggle's sake – and I never thought I'd be saying this, but it's the first boondoggle movie I actually appreciate existing. Its existence is the statement, and it also makes a statement on the concept of making a statement being stupid. It takes digs (ha) at Boomers, at Gen-Z, and all of it, but ultimately we save ourselves, if we can - and increasingly, we can't.
There is no "wake-up call" that can't just simply go unanswered.
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