While watching Downsizing, I was struck with the memory of a directors roundtable in 2011, which included Steve McQueen and Downsizing‘s director Alexander Payne, amongst several others. The roundtable was noted for McQueen being asked about unequal representation in the film industry – McQueen was the only non-white man on the panel; there were no women – and the English director then proceeded to claim that Hollywood directors were “shameful” in their lack of casting black actors. McQueen was right, even if the question was an obvious provocation, and the rest of the panel (which included Jason Reitman, Mike Mills and J.C. Chandor) sat silently, obviously terrified. I remembered that, at the time, I specifically thought of Payne’s presence, and that, despite the fact that I admire Payne and his films very much, he was probably the least capable of telling a story with non-white characters. That even proposing that he do so could lead to a palpable be-careful-what-you-wish-for scenario.

A lot of Payne’s success as a storyteller – and, to some degree, a filmmaker – comes from his avoidance of the kind of big-picture thinking that a movie like Downsizing requires. He is  famously from Omaha, Nebraska, and his best films represent that kind of Middle American “standardness”, or better yet, America’s seeming perpetual resentment of it. His talents lay in razor’s edge satire, not philosophical metaphor. So why do Downsizing, an ambitious project for sure, and the first time Payne and writing partner Jim Taylor have ever produced a script that wasn’t based on a novel. What was driving Payne to make this story in particular? Was he driven by McQueen to finally tell a story about people outside of White America? I can’t prove that, nor do I think that it’s particularly true, but in its worst moments, Downsizing feels like the most expensive expression of white guilt ever filmed.

The movie stars Matt Damon, usually one of our most consistent and beloved movie stars, but that was before he went on what is probably the most disastrous press sequence of his career, and became the first non-offender to get swallowed by the Hollywood #MeToo moment. Damon isn’t doomed in the same way that Louis CK and Kevin Spacey are, but he certainly made a lot of America feel like they needed a break from the usually cherished film actor, which didn’t do much for Downsizing‘s viewership. He plays Paul Safranek, an Omaha-based physical therapist, specializing in occupational therapy at Omaha Steaks. His wife, Audrey (Kristen Wiig), wishes for a more promising life then they currently share. They look at homes they knowingly can’t afford to buy and dream about a future that may never come. Salvation appears in the form of a new medical procedure called Downsizing, which apparently helps the environment a ton, and can make many people instantly rich.

Downsizing was created by Norwegian scientist Jørgen Asbjørnsen (Udo Kier) in an attempt to prolong human life on Earth by severely limiting human waste. The procedure shrinks the human body drastically – most people are about five inches tall – and sends them to live in special “small cities”, where their waste goes way down and their wealth goes way up. Desperate for a reset to their lives, Paul and Audrey decide to downsize, particularly in a small city in New Mexico called Leisure Land, that is known for the most elegant homes and residents. Unfortunately, when Paul wakes up, shrunken and shaved from head to toe, he learns that Audrey has stayed behind, struck by a sudden fear of taking the plunge. Confused and aimless, Paul now finds himself in a strange, exotic world from which he can’t return, with a noisy Serbian neighbor (Christoph Waltz) to boot.

It doesn’t take too long for Paul to learn that Leisure Land is not exactly the paradise it was advertised as. Like the world he left behind, there is a strict class system, and of course this system seems to break down along racial lines. Along the outskirts of Leisure Land are shanty towns with huge tenant buildings where many Hispanic and East Asian tenants live in squalor, usually performing manual labor in the more extravagant parts of town. One of those people is Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a cleaning woman who gained notoriety as a political dissident in Vietnam before being smuggled into the US (after forcibly being made tiny) inside a television box. She was the only person to survive the trip, but lost her leg. A human rights protestor in Vietnam, Ngoc spends her time in Leisure Land trying to help the less fortunate. When she meets Paul and sees that he has medical training, she enlists his help in more ways than one.

Ngoc, and Chau’s funny, intelligent performance of her is the heart of Downsizing, even though she doesn’t arrive till nearly halfway through. Chau is an American actress, and anyone who saw her hilarious work in Inherent Vice knows that she doesn’t speak the kind of Pidgin English that she displays here, but there’s a bright touch of comic timing in this performance. Chau sidesteps what may seem like Asian stereotypes and finds the center of this complex character. Ngoc is demanding and loud, she is a devout Christian who seems to have an almost Evangelical faith. Her commitment to Paul is harder to understand. Her relationship with him goes from need to want without enough transition, but of all the half-baked ideas throughout Downsizing that flop, the ones that involve Ngoc are the ones that work the best.

Payne’s attempts to make a point throughout Downsizing is quaint and forgivable for the most part, but the movie most falters when it tries to draw concrete conclusions from its stories. His strengths are in the details, like the hilariously complex shrinking procedure, or the way Leisure Land’s sales floor bares a striking resemblance to a time share. Chau and Waltz are especially funny, and Damon has always been dependable as a leading man, even if the parts he takes don’t always fit. In the end, though, it is still a White Man’s Story, which is what Payne has always been good at to begin with. There’s an effort being made here, which I can appreciate, but I also wouldn’t fault anyone for finding disingenuous. When the film becomes grave and existential in its third act, it feels bloated with pomposity, and then when it subsequently abandons that premise for its undercooked conclusion, it feels dishonest. It is easily Payne’s least successful film.

 

 

Directed by Alexander Payne