Fire

In Digging for Fire, director Joe Swanberg’s starriest indie offering to date, a lot is said about nothing. Instead of writing a script, Swanberg and Jake Johnson, the film’s star, came up with a 10-page outline and asked their actors to fill in the rest. Luckily, this movie is filled with a number of famous faces that can make wonted, sometimes boring dialogue bearable.

Johnson is at the center of all of it, playing one half of the film’s marital storyline, middle-aged teacher Tim. When he and his wife, Lee (Rosemarie DeWitt) decide to house-sit for one of Lee’s wealthy yoga clients, Tim discovers a gun and a bone in the yard. The discovery leads to the monotony of their lives as young parents being thrown askew. Lee, uninterested by the odd finding, heads to visit her parents for the weekend as Tim invites some buddies over to join in a full-on excavation. As he digs deeper in search of something, so does she. After a friends bails on her for a night out, she wanders the city with forgotten purpose. She chats with Uber drivers about love and happiness. She meets a charming stranger (Orlando Bloom in a delightful little role) and doesn’t necessarily ward off his advances.

The cast is loaded with a mix of Swanberg regulars (Johnson, DeWitt, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston, Melanie Lynskey) and a few pleasant surprises (Bloom, Brie Larson, Mike Birbiglia, Chris Messina, Jenny Slate). In this sense, it is the director’s largest film to date, which makes the decision to let it form itself all the more interesting. What could easily turn into an outright murder mystery plot (there is a subtle creepiness there) becomes a canvas for a simple movie about marriage and friendship and time. The au-naturel script drags at times but the editing (done by Swanberg) and the acting helps the film move along at an easy pace. It travels smoothly, but it finds no real direction, seeming content to stand alone on mood like so many solid indies do.

The film is well shot by Swanberg and beautifully lensed by Ben Richardson, a Swanberg regular and the man who made Beasts of the Southern Wild the visual achievement that it is. It takes on a slightly dark and mysterious vibe, making what turns out to be a somewhat conventional meditation on the ups and downs of marriage and midlife living seem like an unpredictable little story at all times. This eventually-anticlimactic juxtaposition is what brings on the most disappointment in the end, as the feeling that more could have been explored with a unique story catalyst and such great acting is practically unavoidable.

Digging for Fire pushes Swanberg closer to legitimate mainstream appeal while still retaining the many of the upsides of his indie style, foremost his connection to some great, subtle acting. In this sense, the film is a victory for Swanberg. Whether this could be said for the audience is less likely, as the film lacks just a little bit too much to really be considered a resounding success. Swanberg is on his way to truly great work, this just isn’t it.