Screenplay Written by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor
Directed by Alexander Payne
* 1/2 (one and a half stars)
RATED R
For this next installment of the "I'll Give Points For Trying" category, I turn to the film "Downsizing" from Writer/Director Alexander Payne, who, for the majority of his 20 plus years in cinema, has created an uncommonly gifted streak of cinematic excellence that includes nothing less than "Election" (1999), "About Schmidt" (2002), "The Descendants" (2011), and his undeniable masterpiece, the middle aged male arrested development, wine country travelogue film "Sideways" (2004).
Alexander Payne is a cinematic storyteller that has specialized greatly within the satirical to be certain, but has also probed an astounding level of empathy and soul into his explorations of the male psyche often merged with some aspect of a simultaneously physical and existential journey, but one thing he really quite has not been is a cinematic stylist. For "Downsizing," I will give Payne those aforementioned points for devising of a film that is easily is most conceptually and visually ambitious and widest ranging thematically despite the diminutive size of most of the film's characters.
It is a film of enormous humanity but also one of surprising inertia, as the film plods along in a manner that is akin to a depressive sludge. For all of the attention the film achieved pre-release with the prevalence of its trailers, I was indeed stunned that "Downsizing" essentially vanished from theaters in a heartbeat this past holiday season. Now, after having seen it for myself, I am not the least bit surprised. Consider this a well meaning attempt that just didn't realize its own potential, therefore earning Alexander Payne his weakest film to date by a long shot.
In a world so very much like our own with all manner of environmental crises and over-population, the world of "Downsizing" opens with a scientific miracle discovered by the ingenious Dr. Jorgen Asbjornsen (Rolf Lassgard), the ability to shrink human beings down to a height of five inches, a process that could potentially save the planet as the reduction in size could further cause a reduction in waste.
Nearly 15 years after the introduction and success of the downsizing process to the world, Omaha, Nebraska based Occupational Therapist Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig), are facing continued financial issues as they reside in the house that Paul grew up in, his Mother passed away in and furthermore, he has just completed paying off his student loans. As you can see, they are just unable to get ahead. While attending their high school reunion, Paul and Audrey have an enlightening conversation with former classmates Doug and Carol Johnson (played by Jason Sudekis and Maribeth Monroe), who has themselves downsized and are now living in the downsized community of Lesure Land, a location where, as Doug informs Paul, the benefits are outsized as one's finances will translate astronomically upon being shrunken.
After considerable deliberation, Paul and Audrey decide to go through the downsizing process themselves and move to Leisure Land, yet Audrey backs out of the process at the last minute ( i.e. NOT a spoiler as this is shown in the film's trailers), leaving the already downsized Paul alone in an unknown existence.
From here, Paul attempts to devise the true purpose of his life as he encounters a variety of colorful characters including his Serbian playboy neighbor Dusan (Christoph Waltz), Dusan's partyboy companion Joris (Udo Keir), Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a one-legged Vietnamese activist who was jailed and shrunken against her will by the government, and yes, even the good Dr. Asbjornsen himself, who carries even deeper plans for humanity's survival.
As I stated at the beginning of this posting, I do applaud Alexander Payne for trying. In our age of sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes, re-imaginings and all manner of new material being based within pre-existing material, it is almost a minor miracle that anything remotely original is even able to be made anymore. With "Downsizing," Payne has indeed achieved the creation of a new project that is indeed original. Furthermore, I also deeply appreciated the fact that this film is like nothing else in his own filmography, especially as "Downsizing" arrives f our years after his previous film, the well meaning but torpidly redundant "Nebraska" (2013), a film that played like Payne's warmed over greatest hits instead of offering something new.
"Downsizing" is certainly new and is awash in subtle, clever special effects throughout upon its surface while delving into topics no less than the world's over-population and excessive wastefulness plus climate change, liberal guilt, societal avarice, White privilege, spiritual decay, and the potential end of the human experiment, if not the world itself. So, as you can gather Payne was certainly attempting something much grander than a simple, quirky comedy. But just because one can devise of an ambitious concept, that does not necessarily mean that one knows exactly how to bring it to life.
Alexander Payne's execution of "Downsizing" is precisely what sinks it. It is an unfortunately dry experience with a dangerously meandering tone. While Payne's films typically carry such a meandering tone, they are always at the more than appropriate service of the film's characters yet with "Downsizing," it too often felt like Payne was trying to figure out how to film his story while on set each day in real time, with cast and crew fumbling alongside him not certain what to do, what tone to establish, which emotions should be played and so on.
The film has its moments of course. For instance I did enjoy how Payne kept injecting a certain realism into his fantastical concept as characters debated issues about whether downsized people should have the same voting rights as normal sized people. Do they pay the same in taxes? Are normal sized people subsidizing the downsized, therefore keeping normal sized people in financial straits? And then, there is the lengthy downsizing sequence itself, which is surreal and more than a little creepy. But aside from those aspects and a few more scattered here and there, "Downsizing" just could never figure out what it wanted to be, therefore making the drag itself to its own finish line.
Matt Damon clearly did not have a good cinematic year last year with decent yet unmemorable work in George Clooney's dark yet awkwardly presented crime thriller/black comedy/racial drama hybrid "Suburbicon" (2017)--which I did not review--and now, in "Downsizing," Damon elicits a performance that looks and feels sad and tired. Yes, this quality is partially due to the service of his character, a caretaker who is constantly at the service of every one other than himself and the existential crisis he finds himself in.
Mostly, Matt Damon just looks miserable, as if he felt he signed onto a great idea that was not panning out terribly well, and now, he was trapped into soldiering onwards regardless. I have no idea is that is what he was feeling during the film's production. But that is how he appeared to me. Damon was listless, and possessed a significant and surprising lack of energy that contributed heavily to the film's poor, sluggish pacing. In a way, I guess I could say that he looked to be a bit depressed and frankly, I gradually felt t hat state of being more and more as the film continued.
Perhaps it was intentional. Perhaps not. But considering the film's grim subject matter, it is easy to gather that there would be some depressing aspects to the proceedings, considering this is the end of the world we're dealing with. But even so, that does not mean the film itself needs to continuously feel as if we are immobilized in sadness due to a lack of storytelling momentum.
There were some moments late in the film that reminded me very much of Lorene Scafaria's elegant, devastating and so sadly underseen and undervalued "Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World" (2012). Yet where Scafaria succeeded greatly was not just in her establishment of character and her tightrope tonality, which wavered between biting satire, aching romantic comedy, the road film and the existential terror that accompanies impending extinction. Her storytelling focus was masterful in its crystal clarity, so that she knew precisely when to push, to ease, to bring us into the romance only to whisk us back into the film's reality of the world reaching its final seconds, all the having us understand exactly what she was expressing about our larger humanity.
For "Downsizing," I do not know if Alexander Payne essentially wanted to have a film that was so seemingly nihilistic. Yes, the good doctor does indeed create the downsizing process with the pure hopes of saving the world but once humans do begin to downsize, all we see are human being's worst qualities of avarice, greed, hedonism, and self-preservation run amok. Was this the point of the film? I am honestly not terribly certain. Damon's character is certainly the one who continues to seek for meaning in this insane miniaturized world, but once it is all said and done, the hedonists continue to be hedonists, the greedy remain so as well and even if we do help our fellow man, the world is going to end anyway. So...why am I watching this film if it doesn't seem to know what it wants to say about...well...anything?
And then, there is the disturbing matter of Ngoc Lan Tran...
While again, the character of Ngoc Lan Tran, the Vietnamese radical unjustly maimed and shrunken by the government and who soon becomes Matt Damon's character's greatest confidant, is compelling, the Golden Globe nominated performance by Hong Chau is disastrously less so.
Look... I really have no idea of what members of the Asian community felt about Chau's performance and portrayal but for me, the entire escape felt to be inappropriate at best and inexcusable at worst as her indecipherable barrage of shrill Pidgin English smacked so horrifically of caricature rather than something tangible or realistic. In fact, it sounded as if this was Chau's first attempt at discovering her character's voice and Payne just filmed it as is, making it something that was not too far removed from Mickey Rooney's inhumane spectacle in Blake Edwards' "Breakfast At Tiffany's "(1961). Yes, at least from my perspective, Hong Chau's performance is that misguided, taking an already wandering film down some deeply disturbing paths--and unintentionally so, I would gather--a bout race and representation in the movies.
And so it is with Alexander Payne's "Downsizing," a film that exists much like the invention within the film by the good scientist. It is an exceedingly well meaning film, one with the best of intentions, but you know what has been said about those good intentions. Sometimes that goes for the movies too.
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