What is Real, I Can Touch: A Domestic Reading of "Digger" by Nick Bisa

Disclaimer: this piece is spoiler-free. There is one sentence which briefly describes the film’s plot, but it has been struck through; if you have not yet seen the film, you may skip past it. The rest may read through the strike-through like such.

James and Martha love their children. More than anything else. And how can you blame them? For one thing, they created them…with their own two hands.

It didn’t take over night either. They spent many months trying; that was for Joanie. Once she was born, Jesse came right out; it was as if lightning had struck twice.

James and Martha spent every moment of every day raising these kids. Nurturing them through every peak and valley. They almost lived through them at times, but all the books told them that wasn’t healthy, so they tried their best to keep some kind of a distance. But they cared. So much. They felt a responsibility, a burden to give their kids the best life possible. To swerve any of the pitfalls their own parents may have fallen into. 

But they’re growing up now, these kids. Jesse’s twelve, and Joanie’s nearly fourteen, and for the first time, Martha can feel her slowly pulling away. Her own mother Eileen had described this very pull for many years; Martha still denies it. 

But she’s beside herself, Martha. She can’t fathom what possible reason her own daughter could have for pulling away. What had she done wrong? Was it something she’d said?

Maybe. Probably not. But it doesn’t matter. Because they’d get through it, in good time, and everything would work out just fine. And Martha would get to bring it up for the many years to come just like her mother did. 

She’d also use it as a means of grounding Joanie, when her own daughter, Lucy would start to pull away at that very same age; she’d feel as though it was her own fault too, and not just…the way things were.

Life is a series of cycles. No matter how large the scale, we will find ourselves entangled in the webs of those closest to us; those who moulded us; those who can see through our masks; our performances of life.

Martha loves her daughter. More than anything else. And she’s sure she will love her granddaughter, Lucy just as much. But she doesn’t right now, because it hasn't happened yet, and Joanie’s still thirteen.

Joanie’s still thirteen and Martha’s still not sure things are going to just “work out”. I know it will, because I’m the author of this story; I wrote this on the foot of a sturdy twin bed in my London flat after seeing Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film, Digger. 

I knew the cards before they were drawn for Martha. And Joanie. And James and Jesse and Eileen and Lucy. Much like Iñárritu did for the characters in his story, in which an actor named Curtis is forced to navigate a family matter on the day of his play opening; the play is about an impending global atrocity.

Our characters are not real, but to themselves they are. Though their lives may be scripted, they still live and breathe each moment of them. Entirely present and alive. 

As long as they have a scene to perform and an audience as their witness, their stories will imitate life. They will recreate it. They will become it. But what is performed is not the same as what is written.

We all know the world is ending. We’ve been told it in every shape and size. Time and time again. For decades. And there will be many more films made about that fact. And they, too, will be twisted in a similar amount of shapes and sizes. But until it’s “actable”, nothing will really change. Reality will remain in rehearsal. Tragedy will remain impending. Because until “the end of the world” physically takes Joanie away from Martha, until she has to perform that scene on the opening night of the play of her life, she will take her chances. She’ll buy a steak for dinner. She’ll drink through plastic straws. She’ll make a princess castle out of fossil fuels if it means that her daughter will look at her the way she used to.

Martha has more to lose than the end of the world. And how can you blame her? After all, her own daughter, whom she created…with her own two hands…is treating her like a stranger. Martha didn’t create the end of the world. Just like she didn’t create her granddaughter. They can’t compete with Joanie. They’re not even real yet. They’re merely written. Impending.

And so Digger cries, “Level 4”, as its credits roll…an almost limp across the finish line. A falling tree in a forest with no witnesses to bear.

This is a film that is almost too smart for its own form. Drama was birthed out of advocacy. Of democracy. Of community. But by scraping too far below the surface, with no agenda other than cynicism, Digger instead lands on a far more stillening truth; one which no good-willed human being wants to hear:

No matter what is done, no matter how it is spun, what is written will never be real. It will remain an idea, a faded memory, a scene in rehearsal. It will remain reality in purgatory until it’s too late to fend. And so…we wait. It might not be all we can do, but it’s what we will do. We will wait for the carnival at the end of days and we will regret our blissful ignorance and our puny domestic affairs and our failure to learn from those who walked before us, the giants whom we sat upon the shoulders of and called ourselves tall, but until then. Until that scene is nigh…Martha and Joanie will continue on with their little entanglement. Just like Martha’s mother, Eileen did. And her mother, too.

Just like Tom Cruise’s character does with his own family in Digger.

Life will go on, until it won’t.

And how can you blame them?

They’re only human.