Alejandro G. Iñárritu Stands by Digger

After both the critical lashing and the box-office beatdown that Digger has received, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu is ready to defend his movie. “I think definitely it’s an uncommon film,” he told the New York Times in an interview that ran Monday. “It’s a provoking film. That’s the role of a film for me — let’s start the conversation. My personal taste is films that try to tell me something in a different way.” Digger stars Tom Cruise and is largely about the possibility of a climate-change-based disaster devastating the entire world. The movie is loud and eschews subtlety — our critic Bilge Ebiri wrote that “It’s like being trapped inside a tuba for two hours.” Iñárritu is okay with that. “I prefer that to the lukewarm reception,” he says of strong reactions to his film.

In its opening weekend, Digger made $8 million domestically against a reported budget of $125 million. But the offputting parts of the movie, Iñárritu thinks, just reflect contemporary society. “Everything is just to get attention, to get likes, to be uncomfortable, to be annoying — the culture that we are living in,” he explains, while also acknowledging that the film “is not perfect.” Overall, the director seems at peace with the movie he made and the response its garnered. “There’s people that want more certainty in the storytelling, and that’s OK too,” he says. “This is not like an ice cream. So, yeah, we expected that, to be honest.”