Film “Digger” with Tom Cruise: A satire about the limits of satire

What else can satire actually achieve? This question has plagued the entertainment world for a while, but has taken on new urgency since the Orange Man moved back into the White House. A US president who cheerfully posts AI videos that imagine a destroyed Gaza as a luxury destination or himself as a “Top Gun” pilot who rains rubbish on “his” people hardly leaves any room for exaggeration.

The element of unmasking, another essential feature of satire, is increasingly becoming unnecessary, even in the plain politics itself, away from the glaring world of social media. What else can be brought to light when the US President appears in front of the cameras after a military operation and makes it clear quite blatantly: Of course it's about oil!

No exaggeration, no exposure - and at some point no more real outrage from which a debate could arise. Where the monstrous no longer erupts accidentally but is carried out demonstratively, the provocation itself runs the risk of becoming a tired repetition of what reality blatantly displays every day.

“Digger.” Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu. With Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed and others. USA/Mexico/UK 2026, 129 min.

Even outstanding filmmakers have failed because of this advance in reality. Like Bong Joon-ho, who dissected class relations so relentlessly with “Parasite” that the film triggered a real “Eat the Rich” trend in cinema. In the follow-up, “Mickey17,” he extrapolated very similar exploitation mechanisms into a sci-fi world in which technical possibilities finally make people interchangeable. A very current topic actually. But this was overshadowed by a broad caricature of an authoritarian space ruler, whose unmistakable echoes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk hardly caused any disturbance, but rather a tired recognition.

At such a time, Alejandro González Iñárritu's new film “Digger” is being released. Tom Cruise plays the antihero of the same name, who is introduced by waking up in a gigantic golden bed, surrounded by plush, pomp and dermoplastic. Concerned, he looks for his grotesquely old cat, which is apparently only being kept alive using very, very expensive and probably unethical methods. When he finally finds the white, gaunt creature, he serves her a bite from a fine tuna can on the extra-long nail of his little finger.

So he's a weird guy. Cowboy boots and hat, a Texan possibly, a Republican certainly. But above all: he became filthy rich through incredibly ruthless business practices as an oil tycoon - aided by even more incredible relationships with the US President (John Goodman). His company is even allowed to drill for oil in a Greenland nature reserve. That Digger continues to do this even when scientists warn about methane leaks? Of course.

As his environmental representative Dr. When Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) shows up in person, it's already too late: the drilling rig has just blown up. Digger asks about the property damage. He's hardly interested in the dead, oh well.

Almost an hour passes, and the most pressing question that Alejandro González Iñárritu has raised up to that point is: Was he unaware of all the discussions about the limits of contemporary satire (almost impossible) or does the multiple Oscar-winning filmmaker actually believe that his own design is so much sharper, so much cleverer than all the others that have come before “MAGA-Trump-Redneck-Techbro-Monster” cartoons? That seems more plausible when you consider the hubris of his last film, “Bardo,” which was little more than a sprawling preoccupation with an artist’s sensitivities (his own).

But then comes the break. Digger has just discussed with the President how to deal with the massive ice floe that has broken loose as a result of the explosion and is now drifting relentlessly towards Europe. Millions of people could die. They agree – yes, yes, outrageous! – to be silent and to pray. But then the camera suddenly moves back further than it should. Backdrops become visible, as do spotlights and the stage on which everything takes place. So Tom Cruise isn't playing Digger at all, but rather an actor playing Digger.

As soon as he leaves the stage, some things are reminiscent of “Birdman”. Again Alejandro González Iñárritu follows an actor behind the set, again there is a hectic atmosphere and constant pressure, again a man sits manically in front of the brightly lit dressing room mirror. The filmmaker has not completely lost his fascination with the show business and its self-referential neuroses. But this time it aims at a bigger question: Why do we keep repeating to ourselves what we have long recognized? What else are we looking for in the satirical exaggeration of a reality whose abysses lie before us - and, above all, what follows from all this knowledge?

“Digger” now takes a look at those who perform such a caricature, work on it and watch it - and thus also us, the cinema audience. Because up to this point his occupation had also been to watch Digger become increasingly greedy, unscrupulous and grotesque. The film questions the cognitive value of this view itself.

Digger himself, of all people, ultimately disrupts his fascinating and comfortable preoccupation with the grotesque villain. The play in which he exists is much finer than its initially rather clumsy main character: its artificial coloring is sometimes reminiscent of Wes Anderson, but at the same time the pastel production shows a great desire for playful illusionism. The camera willingly reveals its mechanics again and again, showing, for example, stage workers dressed in black who let small clouds and airplanes move through the scenery on rods.

The European Parliament, in front of which Digger finally speaks, is also bathed in an almost lifeless beige and mint, desaturated to the point of political anemia. The glacier has now hit, the catastrophe has occurred, and he is met with pure hatred. Previously, Dr. Ganesh described his boss as the most greedy evil he could imagine, a man who would set children on fire if he could then sell their souls for a few pence.

And yet Digger manages to contain the anger simply by saying what he himself believes to be the truth. Yes, they may hate him for drilling and drilling and drilling even though he knew what was at stake. But wasn't that exactly what they secretly wanted from him? The comfort of an unsustainable life built on fossil fuels, the warm apartment, the convenience of ordering from home, a world in which even the outraged Google search for Digger and his lies is still based on the system from which he earns money?

The consumer argument, which can be used to shift responsibility from profiteers, corporations and politicians to the individual, is as old as it is convenient and could easily be refuted. What's more interesting is what the film does with it: Digger gets away with it, at least for now - and the audience keeps watching. Idle, and a little self-sufficient, one might add.

How bitter this is meant becomes clear later. At some point it becomes clear that the play in the film is based on true events. The ice floe catastrophe actually happened, people have lost relatives, the world around them is in ruins - and they are still sitting in front of a stage on which they are being shown with pleasure who is to blame. If “Digger” had more tips like this, this ambitious project might have become a truly urgent satire. But as it is, Iñárritu himself spends so much time on the cheap caricature that his film ultimately warns against that the warning is buried under it.

And yet after two hours something has been gained. As soon as “Digger” turns the gaze from the grotesque oil baron to those who are watching him spellbound, that Iñárritu flashes back into view, who traced human fates and their entanglements in “21 Grams”, “Biutiful” and “Babel”. And that would be really radical: not to give the omnipresent figures of the glaring present any more importance and instead to focus again on what is actually important.