Alexander Payne (2017)
Trying to solve the problem of world overpopulation, Norwegian scientists develop a technique to shrink human beings to a height of five inches. It may not seem an unsuitable subject for Alexander Payne, a film-maker inclined to belittle his characters. Paul Safranek (Matt Damon), the everyman protagonist of Downsizing, lives in Payne country – Omaha, Nebraska. A sci-fi parable, however, is new – and proves to be alien – territory for this director. The film begins promisingly. The opening sequences in Norway are economical, the first images of miniaturised people witty and engaging. Payne is at home with the mildly satirical social comedy of the scenes in Omaha that lead up to the decision of Paul and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) to get themselves downsized. From an early stage, though, the storytelling is noticeably unhurried and it becomes more sluggish: at 135 minutes, Downsizing was the most overlong of the ten films I saw at the London Film Festival (and the competition was strong). This is uncharacteristic of Alexander Payne. Perhaps it’s a consequence of being a science-fiction newcomer that he wants to take time to show off the ingenious special visual effects and ambitious production design that aren’t part of his usual repertoire.
What is usual in a Payne narrative is that it’s coherently character-driven, even though limited by his condescending tendencies (except in his best film, Sideways). I suffered a loss of confidence in Downsizing, and never recovered it, from the point at which Paul wakes from his treatment to discover that Audrey, at the last minute, has backed out of hers and decided to stay in the big world. Nothing about Audrey prepares the ground for this: it simply has to happen to get her out of the way and leave the downsized Paul to build a new life alone in Leisureland, the specially designed, scaled-down habitat of the engineered little people. Payne maintains a supply of visual jokes that are simple but likeable enough. Medical staff pick the newly diminished up from the operating table as if they were canapés. Waking from his downsizing, Paul checks nervously under the bedclothes that his genitals haven’t shrunk disproportionately and breathes a sigh of relief. To signal their marriage is over, Audrey returns her colossal engagement and wedding rings to him; signing divorce papers is a physical challenge for Paul too. The verbal jokes aren’t so good – they’re not only sometimes corny (‘Don’t get short with me’) but increasingly anxious too, as if Payne feels the need to reassure us (and himself) that he hasn’t lost his touch as a dialogue writer.
The morality tale is a larger problem, in both its political and more personal aspects. Alexander Payne hasn’t futurised the world beyond the revolutionary new shrinking technology invented by Dr Jørgen Asbjørnsen (Rolf Lassgård). One soon wonders therefore about, for example, the international security implications of downsizing: it’s a bit embarrassing when, rather later, Payne and Jim Taylor (his frequent writing partner, who shares the screenplay credit), make a comic satirical meal out of terrorism fears etc. Outside America and Norway, the film doesn’t give much sense of the global take-up of downsizing, beyond an overall percentage quoted at one point and the storyline involving Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a political dissident whom the Vietnamese government shrinks against her will and who makes it, as a kind of latter-day boat person, to America. There she becomes, very gradually, the new woman in Paul’s life. The environmental idealism of the Asbjørnsen project soon converts to self-interest. Within twenty years, the world’s first downsized baby to be born, in Norway, has become a vacuous celeb, coke-snorting and promiscuous. The lower cost of living for the miniaturised means there’s no need for them to work – unless, of course, they were penniless when they switched to the new world. Ngoc Lan works as a cleaner for the rich, unscrupulous hedonist Dusan Mirkovic (Christoph Waltz); through her, Paul soon discovers the down-and-outs of Leisureland, whom Ngoc Lan, in spite of her prosthetic leg, is always doing her best to help. (My fault probably but I didn’t get how American have-nots came to have the treatment, since it isn’t free.)
Downsizing ‘s cynical assumption that human selfishness won’t change sits uneasily with the sentimentality of Paul Safranek’s climactic choice. When, thanks to the consequences of climate change, the environmental condition of the planet is pronounced terminal, Asbjørnsen and his wife (Ingjerd Egeberg) become the leaders of an international movement whose members plan to move underground, beneath the slopes of a Norwegian fjord, there to breed a new human race to replace the old one bound to perish. Paul must either go with them or return to Leisureland, with the altruistic Ngoc Lan. In other words, he must either (a) devote himself to short-term humanitarian help to the needy or (b) participate in a project designed to ensure the longer-term preservation of humanity. Since it’s clear by now that he and Ngoc Lan have feelings for each other, it’s not a shock that Paul opts for (a) – but I got the sense that Alexander Payne was somewhat embarrassed by the grandiose moral dilemma he’d devised for his hero. Paul’s last-minute change of heart, which brings him out of the jaws of the underworld and back to Ngoc Lan, actually appears to be in response to the news that it will take the Asbjørnsen contingent eleven hours to walk to their new destination – a long haul for a man with wheelie luggage.
Likeably proficient as he is as Paul, the contrast between Matt Damon’s regular guy persona and the out-of-this-world situation in which he finds himself was more satisfying in The Martian (2015) than it is here. As implied above, Kristen Wiig has next to nothing to do as Audrey. (It’s hardly surprising that Reese Witherspoon, whose collaboration with Payne on Election (1999) did much for the careers of both and who was expected to play Audrey Safranek, left the project.) Even though Hong Chau is herself the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, her characterisation has drawn some criticism as a piece of racial stereotyping. Chau’s playing, especially the broken English accent, is on the broad side and takes getting used to but she won me over. There are agreeable cameos from Laura Dern, Neil Patrick Harris (both downsizing sales reps) and Jason Sudeikis (an old schoolfriend whose successful miniaturisation encourages Paul to follow suit). After alternating between brilliant performances for Quentin Tarantino and awful ones in Carnage (2011) and Big Eyes (2014), Christoph Waltz, as the ageing party boy Dusan, is somewhere between the two. The smirks and sniggers between lines are gruesome but, as Tarantino soon realised, Waltz is exceptionally skilled at handling an abundance of lines. As Dusan’s sidekick, Udo Kier is better than usual, though that is damning with faint praise. Rolfe Kent’s jocose, sprightly music is entirely appropriate – that’s not much of a compliment either. The lighting by Phedon Papamichael is impressive, especially the eerie paradisal sheen of the sequences in the Norwegian fjord community.
14 October 2017
