Razor-sharp satire cuts America down to size
FIRST LOOK FROM THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
THE History Of Tom Thumb, the first fairytale printed in English, was published almost 400 years ago. Yet still our imagination is stirred by the notion of tiny people.
That’s what writer-director Alexander Payne delivers in the beguiling Downsizing, which opened the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday. But he goes further, delivering a razor-sharp sci-fi satire on American materialism.
Mostly, though, it’s a film about shrinking. The technology to reduce people to ‘0.0364 per cent of their current mass’ comes from a Norwegian institute, as ‘the only practical remedy to humanity’s greatest problem’: over-population.
Five years later, in the heart of middleAmerica ( Payne’s home state of Nebraska), Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) are struggling to get by. He is an amiable sort of cove, who has dealt stoically with life’s disappointments. But then he goes to a high-school reunion, attended by an old classmate (Jason Sudeikis) who has taken the plunge and gone small. This fellow now lives in splendour in Leisureland, ‘America’s number one micro-community’, located under a bird-proof dome in New Mexico. Once they have seen a sales presentation of a vast but affordable mini-mansion, Paul and Audrey decide to follow suit.
Until this point, the film seems like a smart sci-fi comedy, but once the (brilliantly-depicted) miniaturisation process is complete, Payne begins to steer it in unexpected new directions.
Paul’s new neighbour in Leisureland is a charismatic Serb (Christoph Waltz, on top form) who knows full well that nobody has got small to save the planet; they just want the stuff that used to be the exclusive preserve of the rich.
Payne clearly intends this modern-day Lilliput to be an almost literal microcosm of America.
Moreover, when Paul meets a Vietnamese amputee called Ngoc Lan (Hong Chau), she shows him that this new small-scale universe contains just as much hardship as the old one.
None of this would work half so well without Damon’s marvellous lead; yet again, he reminds us he is one of the most versatile stars of his generation.
FOR a longer version of this review, visit Mail Online.