Mindboggling that Alejandro Inarritu conceived ‘timely’ Digger 9 years ago: Jesse Plemons

Alejandro Inarritu’s Digger is a satire as timely as cautionary. It revolves around an iceberg separated from its mainland owing to oil drilling activities by reckless tycoon Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), and heading towards potential catastrophic calamity in Europe. Its canvas consists of a billionaire with a bloated ego, a US President who feels the world revolves around him, and White House counsel who dismiss warnings by brown scientists because of their ethnicity and guffaw at the glaring absence of women in positions of power.

Jesse Plemons on how timely Digger is

In the midst of all the commotion is Kenny, a mysterious observer played by Jesse Plemons. In a key scene, his character speaks to the purpose of art in such times — while art is still subject to interpretation, it must not shy away from reflecting the truth that’s staring all of us in the eye. Art must still be for art’s sake, but not at the cost of deflecting from the ultimate truth — that we’re collectively and progressively heading into a dangerous place.

In an exclusive interview with SCREEN, Plemons admits that cinema, much like the rest of arts, is also getting increasingly polarizing, but that’s only because of the ecosystem that it operates within the boundaries of. “It’s just the world that’s so polarizing. But I have faith in human stories, filmmakers, and actors. That’s what was so exciting about this movie particularly. It felt so timely, unique, and singular,” says the actor.

When he first read the script, he couldn’t believe that director Alejandro Inarritu conceived it nine years ago in 2015, right after the release of his Academy Award-winning Western action epic The Revenant. If that film had a fur trapper (Leonardo DiCaprio) get mauled by a ravenous bear, Digger features unrelenting and unchecked capitalism as the apex predator. “The fact that it’s coming out right now, it’s mindboggling to me that he had the foresight to see it coming this way,” adds Plemons.

Is the US President in Digger based on Donald Trump?

Seasoned film critic and commentator David Polland took to his X handle last week to claim no one will hate Digger more than US President Donald Trump. “Without being about him, it speaks to his selfish, destructive nature and the delusion of power with all the kindness he doesn’t deserve,” wrote Polland. So, is the US President we see in Digger based on Trump, by any stretch? Veteran actor John Goodman, who takes on the character, didn’t model it on any real-life US President, current or past.

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“No, it wouldn’t have been as much fun if I’d tried to make it about somebody. And the President in the film is in such a unique position. In our knowledge, what happens with him hasn’t happened with any President so far. It’s just totally different,” Goodman tells SCREEN, before promptly adding, with his signature wry sense of humour intact, “But ya, there are a lot of clichés in my performance. I really enjoyed it.”