PU #255 — DIGGING DIGGER — Offering Some Much Needed Love for This Misunderstood Movie

Digger is a great movie.

Not a popular opinion but, I think, the right one.

It is a great movie about the pointlessness of great movies, and great art in general. About the sound and fury (signifying nothing) we make when it comes to trying to change the world through writing a satirical movie about things we should be doing something about, instead of doing something about them.

It is a great movie about the urge to canonise and mythologise instead of analyse and democratise. About the seductive narratives we pass down and the futility of holding doggedly to our opposing positions while the world demonstrably burns around us.

Do we want to be right, or do we want to actually move forward?

It is a movie that asks at what cost comes the urge for empty catharsis? At what point do we do ourselves a disservice when we work hard enough to demonise individuals instead of dismantling systems? And at what point do we concede that we know exactly how messed up we’ve made the world and acknowledge that we have all failed to act sufficiently quickly to change the things we needed to change?

And, of course, it’s hypocritical too. It had to be. It’s part of what makes the comedy so tragic. A significant carbon footprint to make, distribute, and promote. Stars who have contributed over the years to our collective apathy, distraction, and demise. Who the hell are they to tell us how doomed we might be?

But maybe isn’t that the point? We are all complicit. After all — we still went to watch the movie. And if not this one, another. We still seek to be entertained as the rivers burst their banks and the sea levels rise.

I wasn’t surprised, after seeing it, that so many critics hated it. After all — it reminds us of the pointlessness of their existence. All that well-considered pontificating about the importance of flashing lights, even as we struggle to breathe. The way they point us towards the attention-stealing spectacles that put us to sleep instead of the more serious matters we know we should have attended. The way they have praised previous brave pieces which made bold statements about the state of the world as if watching those two hours of film and nodding along in agreement might actually cause something to change in the actual world.

And who is it who pays most of their salaries?  These opinion writers whose word makes or breaks a cinematic release? The same media entities that have failed us time and time again in engaging us to act.

Say what you want about Tom Cruise, but he does exactly what he needs to do in Digger to tell the story they are trying to tell. Meanwhile the Oscar for best supporting actor must go to John Goodman. And if it does, and we clap and cheer and stand in appreciation of his great talent at yet another glitzy and fuel-guzzling televised awards show, the movie will have added its final punctuation to its harrowing argument of despair. Nothing has changed. The world will still burn. But as it does, we will all continue to be thoroughly entertained.

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