Downsizing

Every so often an idea comes along that’s so forehead-slappingly brilliant it’s difficult to fathom how it hasn’t been done for.

Alexander Payne’s (Director and Screenplay) Downsizing is one such example; a Black Mirror-esque vision of the future so scarily prescient and curiously relatable that it feels like an important comment on the modern world.

In short (pun intended) a Norwegian company have invented a process of ‘cellular miniaturisation’, a process whereby people, animals or objects can be shrunk to a fraction of their original size. It’s a process that, they hope, will fix over-population and prolong the lifespan of the planet by reducing our economic footprint.

The tale is initially told over a number of years with different developments advancing us forward until we arrive at a time where 5% of the world has been ‘downsized.’ Payne wants to delve into the logistics of this operation; offering an explanation to the audience as to why anyone would want to go through this operation. The benefits are numerous; assets are vastly increased given the smaller size of consumer goods and America has created ‘small communities’ where the public can live a life of luxury.

It’s at one of these communities; the aptly titled Leisure Land, that Matt Damon’s Paul finds himself drawn to as he wishes to be part of something different to deflect from the fact that he has worked the same job for ten years and lived in his family home for the whole of his life.

I won’t delve into plot as the story takes some dramatic twists and turns which are at odds with its seemingly ‘breezy comedy’ opening third. By movie’s end, and a sum up speech by Paul on a boat, you come to terms with what you’ve just seen.

Payne is intelligent with his use of comedy touches. The subtle ‘large’ objects squirreled away in the background of scenes such as a single rose or a dollar bill hung on a wall are glorious. The film veers between physical comedy (a newly downsized group of males being scooped onto miniature hospital beds with a spatula-esque device or some perfect dramatic tension preceding a small rock falling) and great scripting with the eminently watchable Christoph Waltz receiving some particularly good lines. Matt Damon excels with the former; always able to levy proceedings with a well-timed facial expression.

The film doesn’t flinch away, though, from its scathing indictment of humanity. Payne suggesting, quite presciently, that no matter what sci-fi-esque inventions we come up with to prolong our lives, human nature will always find a way to ruin it. It's revealed fantastically when, reaching the end of the Leisure Land walls, Truman Show-style, we learn of a community of downsized people living in poverty outside.

Despite this, Payne is never preachy. He allows us, and Paul, to discover our own humanity, our own sense of self-worth and place in the world. He’s able to introduce a group of characters with a seemingly portentous ‘world-ending’ theory and allow us to decide whether they have discovered the answer to ecological extinction or are merely a mad cult.

It’s a meta-idea for a film that could be reinterpreted again and again. I’d dive back down in a heartbeat to see another part of the Downsized community, some of the tangible threads dropped in about the implications for foreign policy, war and other political machinations leave the future of this idea wide open. There’s easily more comedy to be gleaned as well from the concept and a little more of the wider-world implications and small-to-large interactions wouldn’t go amiss.

As it is though; Downsizing is a human, relatable and thought-provoking little treat.

5 stars *****