VERDICT Downsizing has a telescopic effect: from
Paul’s tiny forced perspective, Payne makes us
stare into the meaning of life with extinction on
the horizon. It will make you cackle, maybe cry,
but definitely also cringe.DIRECTOR ALEXANDER PAYNE
has one of the most impressive resumes in
American independent cinema. Election, About
Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants and
Nebraska are all superbly acted films featuring
engaging yet often wholly unlikeable characters.
Whether it’s rigging a high school election or
attempting to claim a million dollar sweepstakes,
each character fights desperately for a sense of
satisfaction and contentment.
The shift to sci-fi doesn’t alter Payne’s
fascination with characters yearning for greener
pastures. Reuniting with Election and Sideways
scribe Jim Taylor, we’re brought into the life of Paul
(Damon), an occupational therapist and his wife
Audrey (Kristen Wiig), the pair struggling to make
ends meet and get out of the family home that
Paul’s mother slowly died in. The script uses
Damon’s Paul is an avatar for mid-life
dissatisfaction. Audrey (Wiig) is desperate for them
to start living the good life that she thinks they
deserve, while Paul panics and crunches numbers,
worried about affordability. Audrey drives Paul to
make this whimsy of becoming small a reality.
Payne contrasts the novelty of the shrunken
world mostly in the transition from big to small.
There’s a certain lifelessness in Payne’s objective
camera, it taking a clinical approach to the science
of the shrinking process. Subjects are stripped bare,
shaved, have any metallic dental work removed and
look ready to be reconnected to The Matrix.
Once we’re inside the ‘Leisure Land’ small
person sanctuary, we see that the decadent life as
advertised relies heavily on an underclass workforce.
The utopian views of the Nordic scientific pioneer
Dr. Jorgen Asbjørnsen (Lassgård) are co-opted in
each region to become the best and worst
expressions of that culture. For Payne, ‘small’
American life is a monstrous merger of gated
communities, theme parks and sprawling shopping
malls. The thematic focus is that despite what seems
like an egalitarian world, the smaller world only
amplifies our current societal issues. The prospect
of walls that keep people out of the decadent
American lifestyle becomes a scary reality when
you’re four inches high.
Damon’s performance of Paul is solid, but this
bland and indecisive character is consistently the
weak link in Downsizing. Payne frames Paul as a
sponge for those living their best lives around him.
He’s never quite sure who he is or what he wants
and is so pathetic that characters in the film cannot
help but let him know that repeatedly. As a
protagonist, Paul is an uninspiring wet blanket.
It’s a relief, then, to be introduced to Paul’s
party boy neighbour Dusan Mirkovic, played with
delicious deviousness by Christoph Waltz. Dusan, a
Serbian importer of contraband such as tiny vodka,
cigars and perfume, enlivens the film. He is
shadowed by the incredible Udo Kier as Konrad
(his brother), who Payne seems to linger on to
soak up his amazing expressions.
The star turn, however, comes from Hong Chau.
Without her terrific performance, the grating
Viet-English of Ngoc Lan Tran could have easily
devolved into a movie length impression of the
streetwalker in Full Metal Jacket. The activist
turned refugee is a saviour of sorts for Paul, and the
gateway to the hidden dark side of being able to
shrink people. BLAKE HOWARDDOWNSIZING
DIRECTORAlexander Payne
CAST Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau,
Kristen Wiig, Rolf Lassgård, Ingjerd Egeberg,
Udo Kier, Jason Sudeikis
PLOT Scientists discover a way to scale people
down to the size of action figures, which appears
to be the solution to humanity’s burden on the
environment. While the world wrestles with the
ethics of smallness, Paul Safranek (Matt Damon)
looks to ‘downsizing’ for a fresh start.
OUT 26 DECEMBER
RATED M / 135 MINS
★★★
THE NUT JOB 2: NUTTY BY NATURE
★★
OUT 11 JANUARY / RATED G / 91 MINS
DIRECTOR Cal Brunker
CAST Will Arnett, Katherine HeiglTHE LAST TIME Will Arnett voiced a deluded
blowhard was in The Lego Batman Movie,
where the joke of the film was that deluded
blowhards make terrible heroes and the
result was strangely charming. But The Nut
Job 2, like an episode of Seinfeld, leaves its
protagonist much as it finds him. Arnett’s
Surly squirrel becomes simply grating, and
the film a thin patchwork of half-hearted
storytelling and tired gags. The end of
2014’s The Nut Job saw Surly and his friends
in sole custody of a closed down nut shop,
where we rejoin them as they spend days of
leisure squandering a lifetime supply of
food. Only responsible Andie (Heigl)
continues to value the old way of life, and to
squirrel away stores for the winter. A tired,
unconvincing and uneccesary sequel HOHWONDER
★★★
OUT NOW / RATED PG / 113 MINS
DIRECTOR Stephen Chbosky
CAST Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Jacob
Tremblay, Izabela Vidovic, Mandy PatinkinAFTER A LOW-KEY few years, Julia Roberts
heads up the type of film that made her name
in the ’90s — engaging and glossy with
a big heart. Roberts is mother to Auggie
(Tremblay), a boy with facial disfigurements
who is about to deal with the strains of going
to school for the first time — a big step with
repercussions for the whole family. There’s a
danger of such material descending into
mawkishness and, while Wonder doesn’t
escape this entirely, director Stephen Chbosky
infuses his film with gentle wit alongside the
themes of compassion and acceptance.
Roberts is as watchable as ever, but this is
Tremblay’s film — he inhabits the role,
conveying joy and anguish with a glance, all
while under heavy prosthetics. Impressive. LB