Digging for Fire

2015
5.8| 1h23m| R| en| More Info
Released: 21 August 2015 Released
Producted By: Lucky Coffee Productions
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Synopsis

Tim and Lee are married with a young child. The chance to stay at a fancy home in the Hollywood Hills is complicated by Tim's discovery of a bone and a rusty old gun in the yard. Tim is excited by the idea of a mystery, but Lee doesn't want him to dig any further, preferring that he focus on the family taxes, which he promised to do weeks ago. This disagreement sends them on separate and unexpected adventures over the course of a weekend, as Tim and his friends seek clues to the mystery while Lee searches for answers to the bigger questions of marriage and parenthood.

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redx1708 For some reason this film was placed on one of the action channels. Well, it didn't have any. It didn't have much of a plot or any interesting characters either. Everything it build up to just fizzled out in the end. Don't waste your time with this.
spencergrande6 Another chill Swanberg movie, where likable, real characters talk about life's problems, or talk around them (it's not mumblecore anymore I guess). This one is driven by maybe his most straight-forward storyline yet; ostensibly it's about re-kindling a marriage through both a literal and figurative "Digging For Fire."A great cast, character-driven humor (who knew Orlando Bloom would be a fit in something like this?) and a coked up Sam Rockwell -- would someone please give this man a seriously great role?I liked it quite a bit, like I like most of Swanberg's stuff, but I'm still waiting for that breakthrough experience from him. The kind of humanity and minor profundity of Linklater or someone like that.
Argemaluco I generally like the "mumblecore" movement, as well as the evolution it has followed till its current state, a bit more commercial and accessible for general audiences. Yes, they still deal with "the problems of pretty people", but what I appreciate from them is the emotional intensity of the stories and the realism of dialogs which somehow capture big truths about human experience in contemporary world... generally accompanied by indie music and a very natural but artistically satisfactory cinematography. Having said all that, I have to admit that the film Digging for Fire ended up being a big disappointment. To start with, the cast of Digging for Fire includes various of my favorite actors: Jake Johnson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Brie Larson, Anna Kendrick, Sam Rockwell, Melanie Lynskey and Jane Adams... but they are all absolutely wasted in their roles. The leading couple (played by Johnson and DeWitt) obviously has the most significant dramatic arc, and it still feels like a secondary sub-plot which might have worked better as the support of a more interesting or personal story. The cliché of the married couple in trouble who needs to experiment a crisis to get reconciled or dissolved has been covered in many other films (even from the same movement); in this movie, it seems a hollow essay in the road to something more substantial... a "workshop" in which the main themes, the rhythm of the tale and an ending which ties the loose ends aren't established yet. And I'm not asking for a moral or an epic and devastating "message" about the difficulty of modern romance; just an ending which doesn't feel like an interruption because the hard disk of the camera was filled. In conclusion, Digging for Fire suggests the construction of a bigger narrative, but it can't be more than that... fragments of a character study without any structure in order to bring them context and relevance.
alwayshungryy There is a striking moment in "Digging for Fire" when Tim (Jake Johnson) is having pizza on his bed alone, isolated from his friends, while marvelling at a shoe he unearthed from the woods. This scene is subtly moving as we begin to understand what he's trying to look for and why.This is Joe Swanberg's most emotionally mature and thematically rich entry to date. His films pull off a great feat by being dialogue- driven yet having the dialogue be almost entirely improvised. The premise of this quiet relationship study is simple, Tim and Lee, a couple who have been married for a while and have a kid together start to feel as if they have lost their individual self in this process, a weekend apart unexpectedly helps them regain perspective.At the beginning of the film, Tim finds a gun and a bone in the woods behind the house. He takes advantage of the weekend alone to have his single, drugged up friends who he can't hold a satisfying conversation with over, yet he is obsessed with his discovery and wants to keep digging. He feels disconnected, he is metaphorically digging his way out of his crisis by investing himself in this emotional escape. He wants to find mystery, excitement, meaning, a situation that's bigger than him. At the end of the day, he just wants to find something. All of this goes away at the end of his search.Lee (Rosemarie DeWitt), on the other hand, is struggling with the idea that passion is absent in her life and that she has neglected her own desires. She yearns for a night out in town with her old friend but instead finds herself in the company of the dashing Ben (Orlando Bloom), which helps her assess her quest to find this passion she realizes is fleeting and impermanent.The film feels surreal, it is as if Tim and Lee are in a relationship limbo, hitting pause on their life together while they find answers to their personal issues. Did they change? Have they moved on from who they were? Do they still want the same things as they did before? Are the doubts they have simply just nostalgia? In a lot of ways, what they were both looking for and what they found were the same. Both Johnson & DeWitt deliver natural performances as expected from a Swanberg film.The film's great feature is its ability to keep the viewer's mind stimulated while figuring out what it has to say about relationships and identity crisis. The only gripe I have with this film is the ending, it would have had a perfect one if it ended a minute earlier, at the film's pivotal and most emotional moment.Dan Romer's synth-heavy score is effectively minimalistic and director of photography Ben Richardson's work marks a change in style in Swanberg's most and handsomely shot film. Also, honourable mention to Brie Larson, who plays a subversive version of the "other girl" trope.