Cut down to size
> Double-Oscar winner Christoph Waltz is the perfect fit for Alexander Payne’s sci-fi comedy Downsizing
IMAGINE a world where humans are reduced to about five inches tall. That is the premise for Downsizing, set in the near future where Norwegian scientists have developed a process for shrinking humans to tiny figures.
The benefits, they believe, for mankind could be gigantic – each tiny being will only consume a fraction of what a regular-sized human does, saving rapidly diminishing food and energy resources in the process.
Matt Damon plays Paul Safranek, a regular guy struggling to make ends meet as a physical therapist, who, along with his wife, Audrey (Kristen Wiig), decides to ‘downsize’ and go and live in Leisure Land – a community for the tiny people – where his savings will go much further and they can live in luxury.
After Paul goes through with the procedure, he discovers his wife has backed out at the last minute and left him alone in the miniature world.
Paul soon discovers the same old problems exist. His rascally-charming Serbian neighbour Dusan (played by Christoph Waltz) is making a fortune smuggling contraband, and there’s an underclass of workers, mostly immigrants, who clean for the rich.
Downsizing, which also stars Hong Chau and Søren Pilmark, premiered at the Venice Film Festival to rave reviews.
Waltz was born in Vienna, Austria and studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar.
He won his first best supporting actor Oscar his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds in 2010, and his second for Tarantino’s Django Unchained in 2013.
He recently directed and stars in Georgetown with Annette Bening and Vanessa Redgrave.
In an interview transcript provided by United international Pictures Malaysia, Waltz talks about his role in Downsizing.
When did you first see
“They screened it for me at Paramount and it was not in the finished state yet, and they kept working on it. …
“There were little blockages before [which] they masterfully ironed out. It was really great to see it the second time round.”
What was it about the project that drew you in? “I wanted to work with Alexander (Payne). You want to work with people and say, ‘well, wouldn’t it be nice?’... In this case, he had actually a completely different idea.
“He’s the writer and he created this character ... that he has a very complete idea of who and what and why and how this person should be, and then along comes someone who says: ‘Look, wouldn’t that be something for me?’
“He says: ‘Yes, it could be, but not in my book’ – literally. So there was a, let’s say, period of rapprochement.”
Alexander and Jim (Taylor, screenwriter) have had this idea for a while. When did it first come to you? “Yeah, they’ve been working on it for 10 years at least. It’s not a new idea – we’ve all read Gulliver’s Travels – but it’s just the application of it and the relevance and the context.
“So then I saw a script, I don’t know, shortly before they started shooting, when it was time to cast that part.
“I do believe that they approached other people first, that were closer to Alexander’s initial idea.”
So you had your own ideas about the character? “I didn’t have my own ideas, because I read the script, but at that time, I saw possibilities, and Alexander and I talked about it.
“It was an incredibly civilised and grown-up process, really.” Should we be charmed by Dusan? Or is that something we should be wary of? “Why not? Who does he hurt? If you want to apply moralistic parameters: who does he really harm? ... Does he take advantage of anybody? Not a single person.
“That’s why this is a sort of mentor figure. That he’s not a professorial or overly mature person does not in any way impede the fact that he’s a mentor.”
Did you see him as a kind of frontiersman? “I don’t know. I’m extremely uncomfortable talking about the characters I play, because I always feel, first of all, like I’m talking behind someone else’s back.
“And I always feel I undermine what I’m supposed to do as an actor, which is to not explain, but actually act.”
What’s Alexander like as a director? “Alexander is very nit-picky, and for good reasons. I like nit picking. It’s about details.
“The broader stroke is a given because that what you’ve got, that’s what you’ve come with ... but the moment you start thinking about what it is you’re supposed to do, in the interest of the story being told, you have to go into details.
“A story cannot, by definition, be a generality. An industrial product can be, but even the good ones, in that respect, are extremely detailed.
“It is the accumulation of details that really makes it. So nit picking is just another way of describing that.”