You feel it. It's rarely that this is an opening statement we can make about a movie. In the case of Katherine Dieckmann's "Diggers", everyone and everything is so transparent, so joyfully alive and in pain at the same time that you can't help but feeling it. The film begins with a death and a funeral...yes, I know, typical, and it hurts even more to say that it happens in the very small Long Island. However, none of the two contrivances are what you'd expect. Hunt (Paul Rudd), a clam digger, is going to the river so he can make peace with his father (also a clam digger), who shipped out earlier than him and is waiting. He stops by her sister Gina's (Maura Tierney), to get the coffee their dad likes: "Black, three sugar", a nice family detail. When Hunt gets near his dad's boat, he has fallen on the water. His heart stopped. The old man's funeral is not the event itself, but how Hunt's friends (all clam diggers) get to it so we can get to know them: Cons (Josh Hamilton), a drug user who's always complaining about the world and also admiring it; Jack (Ron Eldard), a womanizer who seemingly cares about nothing; and Lozo (Ken Marino), his wife Julie (the beautiful Sarah Paulson) and their kids, a movie family to remember. There's a beautiful moment, the film's finest moment, which is -not by chance- in the poster. Hunt, Jack and Conso are smoking outside the funeral home in a perfectly composed shot, and some seconds later Lozo comes out the door and joins them to form a beautiful image that we admire to the sound of a gaita. It's funeral music, but the funeral is long over. These people have other issues to deal with: life, work, the threat of a big company, the constant illusion of something mildly better that doesn't betray their ideals. Traditional clam diggers like them would never sell out to a major company. Between what they hide and what they know (about their lives and about life in general), between what they like and what they don't (love stories, old and new), between what they should and shouldn't do, or what they must do because there's no other way; in a fine line between the promises people make to themselves and the things they settle for, wanders this tale of wanderers. Ken Marino wrote a brilliant, flawed script that asks a lot of questions and makes the viewer ask some more. A developed character piece that ends up in a climax that might be too big for a small place, but nothing makes it less poignant. Once you've met the characters, you can't leave them behind. You feel it: the need for an answer (like, why do we hurt each other so much?), the solution to the mystery (in another beautiful moment, Hunt stops his boat near Zoey's, a woman he's been watching for weeks..."what are you doing? You broke our silent flirtation", she tells him; and that's a moment of character definition in a perfect performance by Lauren Ambrose), that joy in the midst of the pain.It says something that Hunt takes lovely photographs, as an amateur; that Gina discovers she wants to live again; that Lozo loves his wife above all things; that Cons is constantly trying to finding a meaning; that Jack may actually mean his love. The performances are splendid, all along, specially Rudd in a role we are not used to see him and proves he can do just about everything and do it right. Marino, who wrote the script and his character, so he understands the 1976 setting feeling enough to create a sympathetic family father that you can love and hate, follows him closely. The roles and performances of Paulson and Tierney are another proof of two immense talents that we don't get to see very often. Eldard and Hamilton: impressive revelations. We need more of these stories, about feeling. Because Dickmann did a good job with "Diggers", a movie well acted, very well written and developed in every aspect. However, more than anything, very well told. Yes, a lot of well told stories that, if possible, care for characters and understand them, without taking them for granted. And, if it's not much more to ask, no definitive endings. That's what we need

This is the simple story of 4 friends who are clam diggers, there families were clam diggers for many generations past.The time period is 1976 in a small town in Long Island,N.Y. The people & situations are real, This drama could have taken place anywhere off any Coast,It could be about small fish,.These are people with families trying to make a living & raise there families.Ken Marino wrote the screenplay & has a nice role as well. Katherine Dieckmann directed. It has a cast of mainly featured players in film & Television, Paul Rudd, Maura Tierney, Lauren Ambrose, Ron Eldard. Sara Paulson, Josh Hamilton & Ken Marino are the main players and all are very good. The film is well made,the music is of the period.I liked the movie BUT this could have & should have been better. It is possible if a male directed,it would have been better.One other problem I did have was that even though people did smoke heavily in the l970's,It seemed to be forced & not natural, like the actors were not into smoking.The movie had a very short theatrical run in on under 20 screens in 2007. It did deserve better.Due to its R rating (language & drug use),it is not for children they would be bored as it is too mature for themIt is worthwhile to see, don't expect much,there are a few funny scenes,but this is mainly a drams.Ratings: *** (out of 4) 81 points(out of 100) IMDb 7 (out of 10)

How refreshing it is to encounter an art house, "independent" film that doesn't rely on "quirkiness," "eclecticism" or "eccentricity" to impress the viewer with its cleverness. Instead, "Diggers" is a realistic slice-of-life drama that plays it straight with its audience, viewing both its characters and their situations without cynicism or irony.Set in 1976, "Diggers" focuses on four young men leading lives of quiet desperation, working as independent clam diggers on Long Island Sound. All four have pretty much accepted the fate life has handed them, although one, a talented photographer named Hunt (Paul Rudd), dreams vaguely of one day starting a new life away from his family home and business, if only he can muster enough personal courage and initiative to actually make the move. His married buddy, Lozo (Ken Marino, who also wrote the screenplay), is more firmly tied down to the area by the responsibilities he has as husband and father to an ever-expanding brood of undisciplined children. The remainder of the quartet consists of Jack (Ron Eldard), a devil-may-care womanizer, who becomes romantically involved with Hunt's thirty-six year old divorced sister, Gina (Maura Tierney); and Cons (Josh Hamilton), a perpetually stoned pseudo-hippie philosopher who, of all the characters, seems most in tune with the drug culture loopiness of the period in which the movie is set. In addition to Gina, the women in their lives include Lozo's levelheaded but eternally frustrated wife, Julie (Sarah Paulson), and Zoe (Lauren Ambrose from "Six Feet Under"), a pretty young woman from Manhattan who has a brief summertime flirtation with Hunt.Written by Marino and directed by Katherine Dieckmann, "Diggers" is so low-keyed in its attitude and tone that it may feel to some viewers as if nothing much really happens in the film. Yet, in many ways, this is the major selling-point of the movie - that it doesn't feel obligated to make big dramatic gestures to unravel its characters or maintain our interest. Marino and Dieckmann have a nice feel for the rhythms of life, as everyday, casual moments are given equal weight with major, life-altering events - the death of a parent, the announcement of a pregnancy, the final farewell to a dearly departed.If there is a flaw in the film, it is that the movie is simply too short (a mere 89 minutes) to allow for the kind of plot expansion and probing character development we rightfully expect from a work of this sort. In fact, due primarily to the time constraints, two of the buddies, Jack and Cons, are reduced to little more than minor characters in the overall fabric of the story. An additional half hour or so in the running time would have gone a long way towards correcting that problem. As compensation, the director exploits to the full the bucolic richness of the unfamiliar setting, and captures the laid-back quality of an era in which the youthful idealism of an earlier time has all but evaporated in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. The movie also touches on the threat of creeping globalization as these family-run clam-digging operations are beginning to be squeezed out of business by an impersonal conglomeration that has recently moved into the area. Through Lozo's character, in particular, the movie effectively dramatizes the stress and strain working-class couples and families go through when they are living literally paycheck to paycheck, along with the compromises they are forced to make just to keep their heads above water.Rudd, who has long been underrated as an actor, provides a beautifully understated performance as the soul-searching Hunt, and he is superbly abetted by the other members of the cast.More anecdote than full-fledged narrative, "Diggers" has the benefit of not taking itself or its characters too seriously. It presents its story in a naturalistic, matter-of-fact manner, without fanfare and fuss and devoid of high-minded sermons or heavy-breathing lectures. "Diggers" is the very definition of self-effacing film-making.

I only was able to stay awake for the first half of this movie.. I tried another day to watch it, and managed to get though the whole thing, but sorry, not slow or anything, but I wish I could get that time back.Very boring movie, not sure what the point of it was, not even sure what the stories of the people were.. was one of those films where you find yourself checking under your nails for dirt, checking the seats for gum, etc.Very sorry, but not worth a dime. Take your money/time and see a different film. I am sure that this one had a message, but it got lost(since it almost seemed like a job to pay attention, let alone stay awake)2/10 is my rating.