DOWNSIZING
(M, 135 mins) Directed by Alexander Payne Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
Picture Alexander Payne.
With About Schmidt and Sideways already on his showreel, Payne is gazing out over a sullen ocean, or the formica top of his local bar, or the freeway reeling the horizon towards his windshield when he has an idea: What if we could choose to be small?
To save the planet, sure. But also to be made rich. And to live in crime-free, gated communities. And what if a nice, struggling, working class couple chose to “downsize”, but the reality was far different to what they had imagined.
What if Utopia looked a lot like a shopping mall and a retirement village, just small? And what if the outside world was going to hell in a handcart? What would become of these nouveau Lilliputians then?
Payne hones his ideas into screenplay. Years pass. Payne makes other films. Perhaps he attracts a few big names – Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz – to the project. And then, after another year has passed and some extraordinarily talented artists and craftspeople have done what they do, we get to walk into a moderately packed cinema on a Wednesday evening and spend 135 minutes living in a world we have never seen or imagined before. Is that not the modern-day version of alchemy?
Well maybe.
And yet, Downsizing is not cinematic gold.
The idea is wonderful, but it feels as though Payne doesn’t quite know what to do with it once his
characters are in place. Wiig departs the film too early and so Damon loses a great comic foil.
The film meanders rather than drives to a conclusion – a loose parody of a doomsday drama I guess – before ending on an uncertain note of redemption.
Payne’s best – Election, Sideways, Schmidt, The
Descendants and Nebraska have all been scalpelsharp excavations of aging white men trying to strike a bargain with relevance, in a world that really doesn’t have much use for them any more.
Downsizing looks to be hitting the same notes for a while, but loses its edge, fast.
Only the scenes between Damon and Hong Chau – as a refugee who has been shrunk as a punishment by her government – really elevate the final hour of the film.
An editor who had taken a cue from the title and knocked a good 30 minutes out of the centre of
Downsizing would have helped a lot.
As an exercise in imagination, production design and – I imagine – sheer willpower, Downsizing deserves respect. But it is nothing like as interesting or entertaining a film as the premise should have yielded.