Digger

DIGGER   ***

Alejandro G. Iñárritu

2026

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

IDEA:  In a dystopian future ravaged by ecological catastrophe, a crew puts on a stage production of a cult-classic play depicting the Texas oil tycoon responsible for the crisis.

BLURB:  A nagging creative problem over the last decade, especially in the US, has been how to satirize a reality more insane and unbelievable than any satire. Iñárritu and his collaborators have answered with a clever Brechtian solution: you make a movie where reality is staged as literal theater. Although heavily hinted at through ersatz digital backdrops and a curtain rising under a proscenium, Digger doesn’t give away its game until about 30 minutes in, at which point it becomes exponentially more complex and interesting than the shrill screed against the power elite it initially seemed to be. This isn’t a novel metatextual device (it was present without the misdirect in Birdman), but Iñárritu is after something more insightful than just another tricksy blurring of reality and representation. He wants to understand the value and capacity of art — culturally, economically, psychologically — in reflecting the horrors of the real world. For most of the film, this is done from the side of the creators, particularly Tom Cruise’s Curtis Markson as notorious, apocalypse-hastening oil tycoon Digger Rockwell. Markson’s conflict with his director over how to portray Digger and his time underscores the film’s skepticism about the credibility of historical representation. Just how faithful is Fossil Fools, the play-within-the-film, to the events it depicts? Is it supposed to be funnier to the film’s diegetic future audience than it seems to us, or is it so appealing simply because it provides the catharsis of watching (reliving?) the comeuppance of awful and likely long-dead people? Iñárritu channels these uncertainties through prickly tensions between textures and tones. They percolate in Dennis Gassner’s production design, an uncanny mélange of implausible multimedia stagecraft; Emmanuel Lubezki’s claustrophobic low-angle close-ups, perversely at odds with any theater-seat vantage; Cosmo Sheldrake’s bizarre musique-concrète score; and the OTT performances, however unevenly the cast is utilized. In its final switcheroo, Digger shifts its perspective to the audience, making us question the meaning of our own media consumption. Can art effect real change? Society has been wondering that forever, and Iñárritu is obviously wary. What he does know is it gets us thinking about this question at all, and that we’ll continue pondering it through all the Diggers and Fossil Fools yet to come.