Alexander Payne's latest, which opened the
Venice Film Festival, stars Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig as a husband and
wife who shrink themselves in order to simplify their lives.
Downsizing (2017)
A social satire in which a guy realizes he would have a better life if he were to shrink himself.
Director:
Alexander PayneStars:
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
22 December 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Малък голям живот See more »Company Credits
Production Co:
Downsizing is a wonderfully
outsized movie for these times if there ever was one. Alexander Payne
has taken a conceit heretofore used for gag-oriented sci-fi and comedy,
that of shrinking human beings down to the size of a finger, and
breathtakingly transformed it into a way of addressing the planet's
overriding long-term issue. Captivating, funny and possessed of a
surprise-filled zig-zag structure that makes it impossible to anticipate
where it's headed, this is a deeply humane film that, like the best
Hollywood classics, feels both entirely of its moment and timeless. It
was a risky roll of the dice, but one that hits the creative jackpot.
The rare director who has never made a
bad film, Payne has now arguably created his best one with a work that
easily accommodates many moods, flavors, intentions and ambitions. At
its core, Downsizing grapples head-on with the long-term
viability of humanity's existence on this planet, but with no pretension
or preachiness at all, while on a moment-to-moment basis it's a human
comedy dominated by personal foibles and people just trying to get by in
life. It's also a science-fiction film that not for a second looks or
feels like one.
As such, this is a unique undertaking,
one centered on an unexceptional Everyman character who unwittingly
embarks upon an exceptional life journey; in that sense, Matt Damon's
Paul Safranek is like the hero of a Frank Capra or Preston Sturges film
of 75 years ago, an ordinary man who has a certain sort of greatness
thrust upon him. At the same time, the movie is a highly sophisticated
creation that, due to its off-hand, underplayed presentation of the
future, essentially seems to be taking place in the present day.
The setup definitely makes you lean in:
At an international sustainability conference, Norwegian elder statesmen
Dr. Jorgen AsbJornsen (Rolf Lassgard, memorable last year as the old
curmudgeon in A Man Called Ove) stuns the crowd both by
announcing that his project of shrinking human beings is now a reality
and proving it by appearing in his new guise as a five-inches-tall man
alongside his test “community of the small.” They all happily sing the
praises of the transformation (and, in Payne's one conceit, speak at
full-sized normal volume, not in mouse-like squeaks).
This marks the revolution, albeit one
that will occur in very slow motion; citizens are not coerced into going
small, but make the decision for themselves, albeit with plenty of
persuasive promotion that stresses the great financial upside, improved
lifestyle and environmental benefit. Payne has made the interesting
choice of not involving the government in the program at all — the
scientific initiative didn't come from Washington, nor does funding, as
it's strictly a private enterprise undertaking.
Ten years on, the focus settles on ordinary lives, not quite the low-end, small-town ones on view in Payne's last film, Nebraska, but
just-getting-by, vaguely middle-class folks like Omaha Steaks
occupational therapist Paul Safranek (a suitably chubbed-out Damon) and
his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig). Fortyish and childless, the couple can
see their future pretty clearly and it's not a glorious sight. At a
school class reunion they meet old friends (Jason Sudeikis and Maribeth
Monroe in peppy cameos) who have gone small and rave about life at
Leisureland, a planned community for the teeny where everything is
pristine, well-manicured and ultra-cheap.
On a tour, Paul and Audrey are impressed by the faux mansion-style
elegance and amenities — the grandiose doors and entryways, gaudy
chandeliers and fire places, polished furniture, big pools and golf
courses. Seduced by the lure of this ready-made easy street, where
everything costs a mere fraction of what they're used to, the duo decide
to make the plunge.
Almost as if in a live-action version of a
Pixar film, the reduction procedure is elegantly, even hypnotically,
presented as a mass production affair in a pristine facility accompanied
by official reassurances; the operation is now routine and when you
come out the other end into a world in which is everything is scaled
down proportionally, you can't tell the difference between your old and
new lives.
This is also the point where the first
major narrative dog-leg sends events off into highly unexpected dramatic
territory that best remains a surprise. But it can fairly be revealed
that, a year later, Paul's routine existence as a telephone sales rep is
rudely but amusingly infringed upon by two aging Eurotrashy party boys,
Dusan and Joris (Christoph Waltz and Udo Kier), whose stream of girls,
booze and drugs provides an outlet for dubious fun. Far more important,
however, is how this accidentally leads to another sharp turn through
Paul's meeting with a dissident Vietnamese refugee, Ngoc Lan (Hong
Chau), a maid who resides in a previously unknown part of the downsized
world, a vast tenement filled with poor immigrants on the other side of a
towering wall. The place is like an extraordinary microcosm of the
Third World under one roof.
The strange chemistry of assorted
thematic ingredients produces unexpected and potent surges of emotion at
odd moments throughout the film, but none are as moving and frequent as
those occasioned by Ngoc Lan. A no-nonsense woman of constant
industriousness, she suffers no foolishness, just the pain of wearing a
prosthetic device on one of her legs below the knee. Spending time with
this woman exposes the very Middle American Paul to people and
perspectives he's never remotely encountered, and an equally surprising
eventuality soon leads the odd foursome of Paul, Ngoc, Dusan and Joris
to a true date with destiny in distant Norway, where it scientifically
all began.
Downsizing is an epic in terms of
the human journeys taken, an odyssey of experiences unlike any lived
thus far on Earth but still not at all unfamiliar on an emotional level;
the fundamental things apply, as the famous song said, only the playing
field and assortment of participants are wildly different from what
we're accustomed to seeing in popular entertainment these days.
There could scarcely be a better stand-in
for a Regular Joe than Damon, whose Paul affably and conscientiously
goes along to get along out of a basic good nature until he meets Ngoc
Lan, whose largely undiscussed but obviously brutal life history makes
her limited English painfully blunt. For her there is no time for
niceties, only for very direct communication of life's absolute
necessities and realities. Hong Chau, previously seen in Inherent Vice and HBO's Treme, is sensational in this unlikely role.
Her comic instincts subordinated, Wiig
matches up fine with Damon as a Middle American wife, while Waltz has a
field day as a European playboy a bit past his prime who ultimately puts
Paul on the path for his greatest journey. Outre icon Kier provides
amusingly welcome company as Waltz's second banana.
The film had to be flawless from a
technical point of view to be convincing, and so it is. The perspectives
involving full-sized and miniaturized humans together in the same frame
always look just right, and the straightforward presentation of the new
mixed world, with big and small co-existing, is handled in an off-hand
manner that makes it instantly acceptable. As usual, Payne and his
longtime writing partner Jim Taylor inject droll humor whenever
possible, which helps keep the human story vibrant within the futuristic
technical framework. Craft contributions, notably Stefania Cella's
production design, James E. Price's visual effects and Phedon
Papamichael's cinematography, are immaculate, while Rolfe Kent's score
is discreetly supportive of this moving and beautiful film.
Final rating: 8/10 for the genre and 7/10 overall. Well done.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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