Directed by:
Alexander PayneCinematography:
Phedon PapamichaelComposer:
Rolfe KentCast:
Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Rolf Lassgård, Ingjerd Egeberg, Udo Kier, Søren Pilmark, Jason Sudeikis, Maribeth Monroe (more)VOD (2)
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When scientists find a way to shrink humans to five inches tall, Paul Safranek (Academy Award winner Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) decide to ditch their stressed out lives in order to get small and live large in a luxurious downsized community. Filled with life-changing adventures and endless possibilities, Leisureland offers more than riches, as Paul discovers a whole new world and realizes that we are meant for something bigger. (iTunes)
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I like Alexander Payne's work very much and so far he has never disappointed me, but this one was a misstep. The basic premise is fine, I get what he wanted to convey to the audience, at the beginning it's full of interesting scenes and ideas, but in the last act it completely falls apart under the director's hands, when you get the feeling that Payne is either taking a solid piss at you or showing a loss of judgement. The only thing missing was Monty Python in a hug with Ashtar Sheran, I guess that's how unintentionally self-parodic it made me feel. It’s just a mess, what can I tell you?
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I had a little trouble with Alexander Payne every time. The main characters of his stories are always looking for the meaning of life, their salvation, or a new goal, and usually go in endless circles while I often shake my head at how their situation somehow resolves itself. Downsizing is a shock to me for that reason. The main character actively tries to solve his unhappy situation each time, helps others (often by accident or unwillingly), and is constantly moving forward in peculiar directions. In addition, the topics that Payne and Jim Taylor stitched together are such a mess that I could hardly keep up with the necessary moods and settings. Ecology, marriage crises, migration, overpopulation, sci-fi tangents, harmony with nature, the wealthy, loneliness, dead ends of the future. And each time with an abundance of details. This story has everything, and its conflicting reception clearly shows that maybe there is too much for the audience. However, thanks to the presence of about ten familiar favorite faces in the smallest roles, I consider myself one of the most satisfied.
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A grey movie with a great idea (shrinking people) that actually ended up being something secondary. You can tell a story like that even in a normally large setting. It will be colorless the same way. A classic about how an internally dissatisfied man comes to happiness, all it takes is for his wife to kick him in the ass and for him to find an Eastern European friend... 50%.
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A cute positive drama and a freshly startling conceptualization of a seemingly spectacular sci-fi subject devoted to a completely common man (as if Matt Damon is slowly taking over from Tom Hanks) and his completely ordinary worries. Alexander Payne wrote and filmed it his way, the trailers hardly divulged everything, so there is no lack of surprises, the humor is very enjoyable, Rolfe Kent's music is addictive and Christoph Waltz is totally great. If something was missing for me, then it was that Laura Dern had only a small role... But then again, she was there for a while at least.
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In recent years, Alexander Payne has been filming the same story about aging white men who discover rather too late that they have wasted most of their lives and so they set out to find something that gives their empty lives meaning. Set in a world where people can be shrunk down to roughly six inches in order to improve their lives and save the planet, Downsizing is basically no exception; it just has a more ambitious scope and, in addition to the crisis of the individual, attempts to also address the crisis of western society, or rather the whole world, to which Payne adapted the genre and narrative structure. ___ At the beginning, the film switches from an individual point of view to a global perspective and subsequently applies the same technique to Damon’s physiotherapist character, who finds the solution to his problems by becoming more interested in the world around him so that he comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to start with smaller goals (i.e. local, not global). The core of the film comprising a bitter comedy that questions faith in the American dream and never-ending American prosperity is supplemented with a sci-fi satire and (melo)drama with a relatively explicit political-environmental message. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if a scene was supposed to come across as sardonic (because a character says something terribly kitschy and literal and Christoph Waltz smiles like a simpleton) or touching. ___ A bigger problem is the fact that Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor are at times unable to decide whether they are more interested in the characters or in the downsized world they invented for them and whose laws we are now discovering together with the protagonists. The whole idea of downsizing seemed to me like a gimmick serving more or less only as scathing commentary on what people are willing to go through to improve their social status. At its core, this is a variation of a well-known Payne story that could happen even in the real world. I see the sci-fi level mainly as a way to facilitate the work and to more quickly confront the characters with the dilemmas that the screenplay is intended to address. __ The resulting hybrid holds together primarily thanks to Matt Damon, who is just as convincing as a paunchy forty-something with mild depression as he is as secret agent with lethal skills. The genre transformations that the film undergoes partly reflect the development of his character, toward whom Payne is far too indulgent in comparison with his earlier films (often at the expense of stereotyped female characters). ___ In many respects, Downsizing is a rather problematic film and definitely not perfect, but it clearly made an impression on me. And perhaps the real reason I feel the need to defend it instead of maligning it is the laughing Christoph Waltz as a Serbian smuggler named Dusan Mirkovic, who is ably supported Udo Kier. 75%
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