Downsizing: A Big Mess, by David Bax
Alexander Payne’s Downsizing is a comedy about the end of the world. It might not be so literal about those things as, say, This Is the End or any of the many other apocalypse comedies we’ve seen in recent years. But make no mistake, though the world doesn’t actually end on screen in this movie, Downsizing aims to use its high concept to mirthfully process the extinction of the human race. Given the state of our climate, that’s something we need to do. This overlong and under-focused film, however, is only sporadically successful at it.
Downsizing marks Payne’s second time ever directing a film not based on pre-existing material and his first time ever directing science fiction. Though his main character maintains the Middle American humility and myopia of most of his work, the premise is new territory for him. Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig are Paul and Audrey Safranek, a middle class Omaha couple at the dawn of a new world. Norwegian scientists have figured out how to shrink people to the size of small action figures and, in fifteen years’ time, entire communities have been set up for those who want to do their part to reduce humanity’s footprint on the world and, oh yeah, also to live the high life in a place where a dollar stretches about 80 times further. Paul and Audrey decide to go for it.
Payne doles out the comedy in the form of visual gags, like a tiny scientist giving a speech into a lapel mic clipped to the front of his tiny podium, as well as the general spectacle of juxtaposing very small people with regular sized things like a box of crackers or, later, a bag of crackers. There are other, non-cracker comparisons as well.
Outlandish as that may be, Downsizing actually does a commendable job of selling the reality of its sci-fi setup. Mostly, it does so by, pardon the pun, downplaying it. “Getting small,” as the life change becomes colloquially known, is presented with all the banal, consumerist excitement of signing up for a timeshare. Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor don’t go to great lengths to prove they have everything covered. All they have to convince us of is that the people in charge have thought of everything because, like a five star hotel, it’s in their financial interest to do so. That is what makes it so frustrating when the movie betrays the easy confidence it has instilled in the viewer by throwing a big contrivance into the mix. Paul, who was supposed to be retired as the small-world equivalent of a multimillionaire, suddenly loses almost all of his money. Presumably, Payne and Taylor thought it was necessary to reduce Paul to an ordinary, if tiny, working stiff in order to tick off their thematic points. This is frustrating firstly because the full details of how he became broke are unsatisfyingly skimmed over and secondly because there ends up being no real narrative purpose to his financial humbling.
That’s because Downsizing already has a much better suited representative of the underserved, maligned, working poor in Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), except that it foolishly neglects to introduce her until halfway through the movie. Chau’s performance is a thing of wonder, shattering the possibility of her being reduced to an Asian stereotype due to her thick accent and sometimes shaky English (which is a hell of a lot better than my Vietnamese, so who am I to judge?) and bringing forth a perfectly crystallized character defined by a rare symbiosis of altruism and pragmatism. She observes, “When you know death come soon, you look around things more close.” In that moment, only a nitwit would laugh at her awkward phrasing; instead, we should look to her omission of certain parts of speech as metaphorical. Things are getting worse, she says, so let’s not waste any time making things better. Ngoc is the heart of the film but she has no patience for all that extraneous “heart” bullshit.
Even as Ngoc becomes the best and most important character, though, Payne insists on centering Paul. The result is a movie that is often guilty of the exact faults it’s trying to illustrate. Paul starts out as an example of how privilege (racial, gender, class, etc.) allows even “good” people to ignore the continuing reality of what’s going on in the world after they’ve reached a basic and easy leveling of doing the “right” thing. And they’ll still get more reward for their miniscule efforts than the people they’re allegedly helping. But even as Paul sees more and does more, he never really grows to understand this. He never has to perceive Ngoc as anything more than his own guiding light, his salvation at the end of it all. Downsizing tries to mock the “white savior” trope and then ends up becoming it. Maybe it should have been shorter?
I have to disagree with the assertion that “Downsizing” ends up becoming a white savior film.
Matt Damon’s character is nobody’s savior; in fact, he’s not even really our movie’s hero. He represents the all-American chump, someone who has bought into the myth that rampant consumerism and an upper class lifestyle is the key to life’s happiness. The reason he is so unhappy has very little to do with his economic status. He is unhappy because he has neglected the people around him. Damon’s reasoning for getting downsized is a selfish one; he neglects to find out whether his wife truly wants to do this as well, thinking only of the cost benefits and luxury his lifestyle change will bring him. We see his flaw once again when he begins dating a young mother in Leisureland, as he tries rushing the relationship, without considering how she feels about it.
The second half of the movie grapples with the notion that personal relationships are possibly more important than saving the world. Damon’s decision to remain with Hong Chau’s character represents a tremendous character arc: the decision to focus on personal relationships, regardless of how little time he might have to pursue them.
Downsizing is not about a man who decides to help poor people. It is about a selfish man realizing that he has been selfish. The movie doesn’t try to say he is now going to save the world, or even a single poor person. It says he has become more willing to understand others, and has become more fulfilled in life because of it.
The second half of the movie does have a bit of a hard time connecting to the first half. That being said, I think Downsizing is one of the best films of 2017. It presents a plausible scenario for something that could have just been a one-note joke, while commenting exquisitely on consumerism, human relationships, and the environment.
Downsizing seems to put reassuring the audience above serious treatment of its themes. Here is a film whose high concept (downsizing) is built on the foreseeable end of mankind because of climate change, and on many Americans’ fantasies of gated-community wealth and lazy luxury. To comfort rather than discomfort the audience, the film eventually suggests that only a cult-like hippie group really cares about extinction (which won’t happen for hundreds of years anyway, so no big deal), and the film’s satire of McMansion envy is quite mild. Imagine this film had it been written by Charlie Brooker (Black Mirror) or directed by Luis Bunuel or Michael Haneke. I think that Yonah Paley is right that Matt Damon’s character is the all-American chump, or at least the kind of ordinary nice guy that most of the audience will identify with. His last-minute decision to follow the advice of an assertive, independent woman is a refreshing change from typical Hollywood notions of manly leadership, but it hardly suggests that he has come to some higher consciousness about the transcendent value of human relationships, or for that matter carefully considered his relationship with her. As you suggest, David, the hard-working and tough-minded Hong Chau character probably states the theme best: “Things are getting worse, she says, so let’s not waste any time making things better.”