Downsizing

(Warning: contains spoilers for Downsizing)

There's a lot of scope in shrinkage.  From Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to Antman, movies have mainly explored the ways in which the world can be perilous for the unwittingly miniaturised.  Where these films have portrayed shrinking as a temporary affliction to be reversed or overcome, Downsizing suggests something different - what if you chose this as a permanent way of being?

It's an interesting premise.  Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (who have previously worked together on Sideways) offer shrinking as a solution of sorts.  The world is overcrowded, and under-resourced.  So what if (assuming that the technology is safe and you won't instantly get eaten by the millions of predators that you're suddenly prey for) you could be shrunk, and live in smaller version of the world you currently live in?  This is the suggestion sold to Paul Safranek (Matt Damon).  Tiny adventures ensue.

What size would the Paul Safranek action figure be?

There's a lot to unpack.  A lot of time and consideration has clearly been given to the actual shrinking process and what it would mean to the average human, and this takes up a significant chunk of the film's set up.  The legal implications, the consent, the biological changes and precautions, the procedure, the preparation, the admin...But here the film stalls somewhat - what happens afterwards?  At this point, ideas skitter off in all directions with a couple of significant time lapses.  The most notable is that Paul gets shrunk and then we catch up with him a year later.  So we have no idea of him getting used to his tiny surroundings and his tiny life.  No idea of what he likes and what he misses from his "big" life.  No sense of the old life contrasting with the new.  The "big" world is never mentioned again, which negates the premise - if Paul just gets used to his new life offscreen, then where is the conflict that drives the film?  What is the story?  In Downsizing, it becomes about Paul learning to interact with some new people.  Which means that that shrinking and living in an entirely new world becomes unimportant.  To me, that's an odd decision.   In some ways, this is fairly typical of Alexander Payne movies - life just keeps going until the film stops happening with no clearly identifiable end point.  But this (I think) is the first time that an entirely new world has been added to the mix.  Payne films are typically set in present day with regular people, so new world-rules haven't needed to be considered before.  Maybe this is part of the problem of why this film just doesn't quite work.

Downsizing flirts with a number of issues but never particularly gets serious about any of them.  There's vague mention of politics (does Paul's vote count as equal to a "regular" sized person?  Can terrorists get miniaturised and cross the border undetected?), ethics (political activist Ngoc Lan Tran - played by Hong Chau - is miniaturised against her will), environmental concern (miniaturisation is suggested as a solution to the pressure on the world's resources), economics (a small amount of money in the "big" world is worth considerably more in the "small" world), sociology (people seem to automatically create the same communities in the new world) and religion (Ngoc's faith is touched upon briefly).  I wonder if maybe Downsizing may work better as a television series than a film, in order to better service the multitude of ideas that it toys with.

Furthermore, the film is not entirely sure what it's trying to be.  If it's satire, it's unclear what it's sending up; if it's comedy, it's missing it's punchlines; if it's an environmental warning, it's only message seems to be that whatever we try to do now, it's too late.  It almost seems like there's an analogy or a theory or a set of beliefs/principles being explored, but if that's the case its message is lost on me.  Big ideas, small impact.  Or maybe it's just over my head.

Additional thoughts, comments, questions:

• What exactly was the point of Christoph Waltz in this film?

I'm actually asking you, Christoph

• I know I'm overthinking this, but there doesn't seem to be much of a system in place for tiny people - no doctors, no police.  Does crime just not happen?  Do people not get sick?  If you're a tiny person wouldn't you need be looked after by tiny doctors?

• Why does Paul go to work for Lands End when he's an Occupational Therapist?  Is there no OT roles?  Has call centre work been outsourced to tiny people?  So many questions...