Downsizing
Less isn’t really more, but there’s an intriguing premise at the heart of Alexander Payne’s affecting and surprisingly sweet
Downsizing. If we are, as our science seems to indicate, really killing the world, then maybe we should avail ourselves of any means necessary to minimize ourselves. If Norwegian scientists come up with a way to shrink ourselves to about 5 inches tall, why shouldn’t we volunteer to reduce our footprint?
Actually Paul Safranek’s (Matt Damon) life got small a long time ago. He might have made a doctor had he not had to become caregiver to his dying mother (who mutters that more research money should be allotted to curing fibromyalgia than to helping some Nordic types get small). So instead he ended up as an occupational physical therapist at Omaha Steaks, a diligent and useful (but in many ways de-
pressed) member of society. He and his wife, Audrey, (the invariably reliable Kristen Wiig) have stalled out on a low rung of the lower middle class of society, with few prospects for advancement.
Paul is modest and thwarted; it pains him to have disappointed his wife. She doesn’t say anything, but he can tell she expected more.
And when they meet their first little people, littered in a Plexiglas shoe box for a high school reunion, Paul and Audrey are intrigued enough to investigate the option for themselves. And when they discover their minor savings converts to a multimillionaire lifestyle in the land of the small (middle-class people can live a life of leisure when their net worth is multiplied a thousand times; they can live for years on a week’s groceries), they decide to undergo the irreversible operation. But when Paul — after a wonderfully detailed and kind of plausible sequence depicting the medical minutiae of the shrinking process — wakes up on the other side, he finds Audrey has backed out at the last minute.
She’s divorcing him. He has to give up the deluxe
dollhouse they’d selected as a couple and takes a job in a call center, one of the few professions available to the extremely tiny.
Sure, it’s a metaphor, and at times a clumsy one, but the second half of the story — in which Paul meets a black marketeer/playboy played by Christoph Waltz and a forcibly shrunk-down Vietnamese political dissident (Hong Chau) — holds a few surprises before evaporating on an obvious upbeat note.
Downsizing is a love story, and only incidentally a scifi comedy, but its strength lies in observational moments rather than heartfelt speeches. It’s enjoyable, and Damon functions as an excellent Everyman, a slightly overweight dude who wishes he could be great — and in the end satisfyingly settles for being good.