

Digging for Fire
dir. Joe Swanberg · 2015
Tim discovers a gun and a bone while house-sitting, igniting a weekend of speculation and introspection. As he grapples with the mystery, his wife Lee seeks clarity away from their family life. Watching this film feels like a gentle stroll through the complexities of marriage and self-discovery, where every conversation and moment carries the weight of unspoken truths.
Married couple Lee and Tim, a part-time yoga instructor and a public school physical education teacher respectively, jump at the opportunity to sit at the secluded Los Angeles Hills house of an actress acquaintance for two weeks as a mini-vacation for them and their three-year-old son, Jude. The house sit starts with an unusual event: Tim finds on the property in the wooded hills just beyond the swimming pool a gun and a bone. He believes the bone could be a human one, and that there could be a murdered dead body buried in the hills in the vicinity of where he found these items. Tim telephones the police, who tell him they can do nothing unless an actual body is found. As such, Lee convinces Tim to drop the subject. On their first weekend at the house, Lee decides to leave Tim on his own for the weekend to complete their income tax return, which he has long put off, while she and Jude go to visit among others her mother and stepfather, and her sister Squiggy and her family, neither who she sees often. Instead of focusing on the taxes, Tim uses the opportunity of Lee being away to hang out with some buddies, who in turn invite some other friends to the house. The mention of his find in the woods leads to some of the people at the house being immersed in his speculation along with him, Max in particular who seems the most interested. Max, however, may have other interests in digging besides finding buried things. Meanwhile, Lee has needed this weekend away from her husband, and time away from Jude, Grandma and Pop Pop, who have agreed to babysit, to re-energize herself and evaluate her current life, which she feels is not her own. By the time Lee and Tim come back together at the end of the weekend, they may have a different understanding of their relationship and their life together with Jude.
Talking points
- the impact of parenthood on personal identity
- the nature of relationships in contemporary society
- the significance of small moments in life








