Lee (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Tim (Jake Johnson, who also
co-scripted) are a young couple with a child about to enter preschool. Lee teaches yoga; Tim is a high-school gym
teacher; and their family are house-sitting in an upscale home for an actress
out of the country filming. Lee is
stressing about their child’s education: she wants their son to go to a good
school and is worried how they are going to pay for it. Tim’s view is more lax: he teaches in public school and feels it would
be hypocritical for their son to not attend there. Tim is also reticent to prepare and file
their tax return. To top it off, Tim has found on the property a
rusty revolver and an old bone. He wants
to dig further and see what else he can uncover. Understandably, Lee wants Tim to abandon that
idea but she knows that he will not.
Instead, Lee decides to visit her parents (Judith Light and Sam Elliott)
with her son for the weekend: this visit will afford her the opportunity to
leave her son in good hands and have a relaxing evening out with friends. Tim, unsurprisingly, becomes obsessed with
the idea of finding more treasures on the property. He continues to dig and has friends over for
the weekend. Lee and Tim, at this point,
will remain separated for the duration of Digging
for Fire, and each will take her/his spiritual journey during this last
vestige of youth.
When Digging for Fire
concluded and the credits began rolling, my sister, who was also in attendance
at this viewing, said, “Nothing happened.”
She’s right: Digging for Fire is a drama and it follows the traditional,
three-act structure of drama; but nothing “dramatic” happens. The only time that a character raises his
voice, Ray (Sam Rockwell), it does not end with a violent confrontation or a
yelling match. Hurt and embarrassed, Ray
leaves after his outburst, since he had been chastised by Tim for interrupting
his evening with Max (Brie Larson). The
only time that a fight occurs in Digging
for Fire is off screen: a chivalrous
Ben (Orlando Bloom) politely escorts a drunk out of a bar who was hitting on a
clearly perturbed Lee. For his
chivalrous act, Ben receives a cut above his eye but he doesn’t throw a punch
in return. In fact, he asks the hostess
at the bar to call the drunk a cab.
Finally, for example, both Tim and Lee have an opportunity to cheat on
each other that evening: Ben cooks Lee a
meal for helping him tend to his wound, and the two take a moonlit stroll on
the beach. Ben kisses Lee, and despite
the fact that she is attracted to him, she leaves him at the shoreline. Tim and Max have a day of digging and bonding
and dinner. She comes over to the house
the morning after the party at Tim’s house to retrieve her purse. Max stays, and they get to know each other,
creating a close connection. Tim is too
scared to even put his head in Max’s lap—it’s fairly certain that Lee and Tim
love each other: they just need some
time away from each other to re-enforce and realize it.
Digging for Fire is
about the last days of youth and the entrance into real adulthood, the
beginning of a family and its responsibilities.
(Swanberg’s son, Jude, plays Lee and Tim’s child, so Swanberg may be
experiencing the same issues as he has rendered creatively.) The film presents its themes in an
understated manner, indicating, perhaps, that the process is not as stressful
as its main characters are making it (it is rather an intuitive, natural
choice). Some are reticent to enter
adulthood, such as Ray, and some of the characters, like Max, are clearly in
the middle of youth. Lee and Tim are
going to cross the threshold by the end of the film. At times the symbolism of the film is a
little heavy-handed (e.g. Tim’s discovery in the final act), but overall, the
symbolism is organic. (In an especially
adept scene, Lee purchases a leather jacket as an impulse buy. Later, she steals money out of her mother’s
purse.) In one of my favorite scenes,
Lee visits her friends, a married couple with two children and a nanny,
portrayed by Melanie Lynskey and Ron Livingston. Lee wants Lynskey to go out with her for the
evening. Lynskey’s character declines to
go out with Lee: it is implied that her
husband may be cuddling up to the nanny, as Livingston’s character has invited
the nanny to accompany them on a family trip to Costa Rica. A lot of the scenes have a Raymond Carver,
slice-of-life feel to them.
Again, Swanberg with Digging
for Fire makes another interesting film about intimacy; and he does not
need overtly “dramatic” scenes to accomplish a rather fine piece of cinema for
those open-minded and willing to see it.
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