Direction: Georgis Grigorakis
Country: Greece
Greece is a country with firm cinema signatures, going from the political/philosophical statements of Theo Angelopoulos to the provocative irreverence of Yorgos Lanthimos to the fresh contemporary spins of Athina Rachel Tsangari. Sad to say that Georgis Grigorakis doesn’t present us with sufficiently interesting material in his debut feature, Digger, to earn a place among these winning filmmakers.
His film centers on a father and a son who haven’t seen each other for 20 years, joining forces in the woods to fight a greedy mining company that wants their land for profit. Even offering its own details, the story isn’t exactly new. The initial prospect was wasted to a point where I was unable to connect to any of the characters. It’s a cold movie that hardly got a reaction out of me as it brings few emotional instincts to its subject.
The relationship between Nikitas (Vangelis Mourikis), a solitary aging man who loves nature, and his estranged son, Johnny (Argyris Pandazaras), a motorcyclist who left Creta to claim his share of the inheritance, never felt strong and genuine. Aggravating this, there’s an insipid romance and time-consuming interactions at local bars that, after misleading us into some kind of tension, end up ineffective.
The plot - written from a story by Grigorakis, Mourikis and Maria Votti - is so torpid that it sinks deep in thick muddy waters in no time; a burden that, hampering a fluid storytelling, makes Digger a mediocre movie with a stubbornly resistant message.
