Digging for Fire
Director: Joe
Swanberg
Writers: Jake
Johnson, Joe Swanberg
Starring: Jake
Johnson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Brie Larson, Orlando Bloom
Rating: Four stars
out of five
Available in
limited release and on-demand now.
Anyone can go on a
quest. The destination doesn't always matter – sometimes the mere
fact that it's happening can make all the difference in the world. It
can make you feel better, like you have a purpose, even when you're
otherwise feeling stuck. But mostly, quests for quests' sake can be
distractions from the necessary hard work of being a responsible
adult.
That is what Jake
Johnson's Tim and Rosemarie DeWitt's Lee learn in Digging for
Fire. They are staying at a house owned by a rich client of
Lee's. Tim, feeling insecure about the money he makes as a public
school teacher, sulks off on his own while Lee and their young son
play around the property. On the back hill behind the house, Tim
finds a bone and a rusty old handgun. The mystery eats at him. What
happened here? He annoys Lee with his amateur detective impression
before she requests that he leave it be. She's wiped out and needs a
break. She takes their son to her parents' house for the weekend and
plans a night out with an old friend. Tim gets the big stranger's
house to himself, and he is tasked with doing the couple's taxes over
the long weekend.
The taxes sit on
the kitchen table, a messy tangle of forms and crinkled receipts. Tim
looks at them with contempt and apprehension, things getting in the
way of his discovery. But he promised he would not delve any deeper
into the possible cold case in his temporary back yard, so he must
procrastinate a new way. He invites some friends over for a barbecue.
Drinks flow and beautiful, years-younger girls (played by Brie Larson
and Anna Kendrick) show up, ready to be impressed. Naturally, the
quest goes back in action, with other pieces of evidence popping up
with every shovelful of dirt.
Lee's night gets
progressively more disappointing, with canceled plans and the sob
stories of her Uber drivers not having their intended effect of
making her feel better about her own situation.
This is when
Digging for Fire becomes, on the surface, a more conventional
character drama. But there is more going on underneath that reveal
more depth. Temptations and near misses complicate already present
feelings of inadequacy and run-of-the-mill boredom. Director Joe
Swanberg, a veteran of the Mumblecore scene of DIY filmmaking, shoots
things with a much greater sense of visual purpose than he has
before. While there are conversations that highlight the feelings
characters have about each other, the way Swanberg's camera holds on
the actors' faces tells the story much better than any lines of
dialogue could. The uncommented upon tax pile he returns to a couple
times serve as a reminder of oppressive reality that should be
centering Tim, but he is off adventuring and solving the murderous
puzzle in the backyard. A late night trip to the beach for Lee, which
includes a look at Saturn through a telescope, help her understand
the silliness of her complaints about her life situation.
There are
conflicted feelings inside these characters. The ways they come to a
head are conflicted, too. Each member of the couple makes a choice to
do something possibly marriage-destroying. One, however, gets a deus
ex machina in the form of an old friend to get in the way of the poor
decision making. The other immediately has a change of heart upon
making a bad choice. On one level, it could be seen as highly unfair
to one of them. A plot contrivance keeps one member of the marriage
free of any real guilt, but the other is stuck feeling bad for what
is technically a lesser offense. On the other hand, the “saved”
character seemingly has no qualms about making a much worse
transgression, and is upset about not being “allowed” to go
through with it. All the while the other member realizes such a
decision would be bad for all involved.
All this sounds
like Digging for Fire is a dour piece of doom cinema. It's
not. There is a sense of fun hanging over most of it. It has a
playfulness to the scenes with Tim and his friends excavating the
crime scene that recalls Stand By Me, but for guys in their
30s who might be getting a little pudgy in the middle. The
back-and-forth between Tim and Lee is filled with jokes – they
enjoy each other's presence. And that is the point of the film. When
these characters are together, they bounce off each other in a way
that makes the not-so-fun parts of adulthood a little more bearable.
It's so easy to forget that when they're apart, with all the noise
that enters their lives for this brief weekend. But noise is all it
is. There's grace in that.
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