‘Downsizing’ is really just a downer
Even before it completely falls apart, even before it begins to seem as though it were being made up on the spot, “Downsizing” is strangely unlovable. It’s a place we don’t want to visit, a world we don’t want to inhabit. Watching it feels like work.
Co-written and directed by Alexander Payne, the movie is an intelligent person’s response to the environmental and economic anxieties plaguing the modern world. Dumb sci-fi movies are all about the destruction of the universe, but “Downsizing” is more localized, serious and despairing. Its whole atmosphere is depressed — post-hope.
In the movie’s first scene, scientists develop a process by which people can be shrunk to 5 inches in height, a process designed to reduce the human footprint and save the planet. But in practice — this is the movie’s one genuinely clever and poetic touch — people are attracted to downsizing for economic reasons. For an outlay of just $150,000, a person can buy a mansion and finance a life of leisure, without ever having to work again.
Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig play a fortyish couple, struggling to buy a first house. They become attracted to downsizing because they grasp that, in the full-size economy, they are always going to be struggling. Though they approach downsizing with some enthusiasm and expectation, we can’t help but see this the way Payne and co-screenwriter Jim Taylor see it, as the self-abnegation of the middleclass, as two people willing to erase themselves and do violence to their own bodies because of the way wealth is allocated in modern America.
This is a provocative and arresting opening, but it’s only an opening, and from there Payne must deliver. He does, but only in small ways, such as the careful rendering of Leisureland, the downsized community. In terms of story, or at least narrative interest, “Downsizing” is essentially over less than a third of the way in. Paul (Damon) floats through the movie with a sadness that never lifts, which reflects the movie’s outlook and philosophy.
You know a film is bad when even Christoph Waltz can’t save it. He plays Paul’s upstairs neighbor, who is always having wild parties in his fancy apartment, and for a time we think, OK, good, something fun will come from this character. He’s full of mischief. He’s a black marketeer, pirating luxury items (wines, cigars) to the small communities. But nothing really happens.
Instead, Payne bogs himself down in a story line about a Vietnamese dissident (Hong Chau), who stows away to Leisureland and, because she didn’t buy in, ends up as a cleaning woman. This leads to a whole rumination on income inequality within Leisureland itself, with the idea, I suppose, that even in a downsized community, hierarchies based on exploitation are inevitable. But it all seems so tired, so good, so preachy, so weak, so without vitality or promise, as though Payne were just indulging in liberal despair, rather than thinking his way through the story.
It doesn’t help that he guides Hong Chau to a sentimental performance, full of tearful outbursts, or that he seems to forget that Waltz is even in the picture. Meanwhile there’s poor Matt Damon: If you see “Downsizing” — but why would you? — pay attention to Damon in the movie’s last 45 minutes. Notice how he’s hanging on by his fingernails, really trying. This is an experienced actor pushing through the scenes, actively willing the screenplay to work by investing in every moment. And he can do nothing.
In the end, “Downsizing” doesn’t get past its original conceit and doesn’t even work out the implications of its premise. What about predators? When the little people go boating in Norway, what about birds and insects? By the end, “Downsizing” is one of those great ideas that should have just stayed an idea.