Alejandro G. Iñárritu: ‘Tom Cruise loved this film because it freed him from the handsome, strong man that he is’

Digger is like a mango. It’s an acidic film, but also a bit sweet; outwardly it seems one thing but inside it contains surprises, and it needs time to ripen. Like a mango, its flavor can’t be explained. In fact, it’s better not to even try, says its director, Alejandro González Iñárritu: “The only way to know what a mango tastes like is to put it in your mouth. And you have to put this film in your eyes to understand it, because if I explain it to you, you won’t get it.”

The film, starring Tom Cruise, opens in theaters this Friday after a decade in Iñárritu’s palate and mind. The night before this conversation, the 63-year-old Mexican filmmaker finally saw his work screened, for the first time with an audience, in London, with the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate, whom he met. “I think they were digesting the experience,” he says by video call with EL PAÍS from a hotel in the British capital.

Before reaching theaters, press screenings were limited and included specific requests to reveal as little as possible. Like the Prince and Princess of Wales, viewers who have already seen it are slow to react. It takes time to understand the film, which is packed in layers like a matryoshka doll. But there is a theme running through them: capitalism. Broadly, Digger is the story of Digger Rockwell, an oil magnate played by Cruise, a man with vast wealth and power that he displays before other powerful, aging white men who prove to be fairly inept when their decisions begin to endanger humanity.

However, he says that this scathing critique of today’s world does not come from a “necessarily ideological position”: “For me it’s an exploration, an observation with a sense of humor about human nature, power and the insatiable ambition that turns one person’s profit into a problem for millions of people.” For him, that kind of power should carry “responsibility, yet often it’s irresponsibility,” detached from reality.

A reflection of today’s reality

Many will see reflections of real people in the film’s protagonists, even though it was planned years ago. “That clash with reality is what we all are experiencing right now,” Iñárritu admits. “And the weapon to transform or change the perception of that reality is language, the word, the narrative.”

According to the filmmaker, more than the story itself, the film is about how reality is told: “It’s about storytelling, the stories we tell ourselves to justify our actions. About how we will tell our story when years have passed,” he says. And he cites a line to express it: “As Marx said, history is written twice: first as tragedy and then as comedy.”

The author of Amores perros, Babel and the Oscar-winning Birdman is an expert at threading stories inside other stories. In Digger he juggles that again: confronting and playing “with what is comical and what is tragic in what’s happening in the world.” In the world of Digger and in the real world. “We are at a moment where fiction is taking over reality, because a part that is more fiction than reality is being written; in other words, reality is being ignored and manipulated. And with the technology that exists now, that reality can be sculpted very quickly,” the director says, recalling how “the major, let’s say fascist, governments” always try to control language, the narrative, the story first, “and with that you control the masses.”

That is why, for him, it’s not just a story about whether capitalism is good or bad. “Reality is very complex, contradictory, ambiguous. No one wants it that way. When a populist arrives he simplifies it and says: ‘The solution is this,’ and people love that idea, because it would be very nice if reality were black and white, but it isn’t,” he says. “There are good and bad things, but we have to make decisions, and that’s why the film involves all of us in some way. There are no good guys and bad guys — that is the reality.”

It sounds intense. But in the end, Digger is a comedy. He likes comedies, “but with heart.” He didn’t want to make only an intellectual reflection “or a mockery,” he adds, but also “an observation of human nature with a certain candor and compassion, and at the same time something that ultimately makes us feel.” It is also about the role of art and how stories are told “from the artists’ point of view, about how they will document history, which is normally told by the powerful.”

He also acknowledges that he had no trouble maintaining an omniscient role, “without taking an easy position of good or bad.” “I think the question is another, and it exists a lot in literature. With Don Quixote, Cervantes practically invented authors’ self-awareness. And the idea of asking, within the fiction itself, what reality is.”

Cruise, excited

Although the cast includes Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons and a deliciously histrionic John Goodman, the weight of the film rests on Tom Cruise. It’s a character that provokes disgust, laughter, pity and hatred all at once. “It’s all Tom’s merit, a person you can’t take your eyes off,” the director acknowledges. The first time they met for the project was in 2019, when Iñárritu had already been writing the story with Sabina Berman for two years. “We met and I showed him my office; I had 300 or 400 storyboard images of Digger’s world. He liked it a lot, but then the film couldn’t be made for many reasons — budget, scheduling. Later I rescued it and rewrote it completely,” he recalls.

It was after that rewrite that he returned to Cruise, who was still interested in the project that had blown his mind three years earlier. The actor did make a curious request: that Iñárritu read the script aloud to him. “It was a strange thing, but I liked it because I heard for the first time the words that had only existed in my head. It helped me and him; [Cruise] was like a child listening to a story.” He says their creative visions aligned from then on and they never argued: “It was mutual trust from the beginning, always a space to explore and create together.”

The 64-year-old actor had to get into the skin of an old man. When the writer explained the long makeup sessions he would face — up to six hours a day — Cruise accepted. “He looked me in the eye as if to say: are you kidding? But the truth is he loved it; he laughed,” he says, explaining that he is an actor without fears, whether jumping out of a plane or growing old. “He loved it because it freed him from the handsome, strong man that he is.”

The director who got Leonardo DiCaprio his longed-for Oscar for The Revenant a decade ago knows that this is Cruise’s big opportunity. But that isn’t his field — it’s the actor’s — in these long months leading up to awards season (the Golden Globes are January 10; the Oscars, March 15). All he says is that his lead actor is happy. “He says it’s the role that cost him 46 years,” the years he’s spent in the film industry, “that it’s the best role he’s ever done in his life. He’s very proud of the film, very happy, and that pleases me, because he did a great job — very difficult, very challenging, but also very joyful.” Having him and that cast was also pleasurable for the director, who compares them to “the best jazz musicians for a top-level piece.”

They rehearsed long and hard to find the film’s tone. “It was the hardest thing,” he admits, to find that complexity between comedy and tragedy, “the space where contradiction is found.” But having reached it, he believes audiences will enter his narrative, that “they’ll have a lot of fun and be moved.”

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