A story that is told at the expense of the larger ideas of its themes cannot, in fact, survive because, much like pedantic continuity details (cough Star Wars fans), a larger theme is not what is compelling about a great story. What’s compelling about a great story is the way that said theme naturally develops from the relationships of characters. One of the best directors at doing this is Alexander Payne. With classics such as Citizen Ruth, Election and The Descendants, Payne and his co-writers crafted stories that plotwise were about characters confronting their horribly corrupted yet horribly pitiful dispositions, but within said stories, they hid stark political and societal messaging that always rung true. The trick about those stories was that the messages were always in the very back of the movie, with the compelling characters and plot holding the entire thing up, only to be supported by the subtext. Downsizing thrusts that subtext into text and doesn’t have a strong enough core of plot or characters to hold itself together, something truly unfortunate because the ideas here are pretty interesting, if possibly wrongheaded. That thesis being presented, the text being at the forefront of a film doesn’t necessarily ruin a movie. Great films from this year like The Shape of Water and The Square thrust their subtexts into text and come out just fine because they have great characters and great stories. Downsizing, which focuses on Matt Damon (sigh) as Paul Safranek, doesn’t really know what to do with Paul himself, who does make a character journey but doesn’t do so naturally. In fact, if I remember correctly, the message of the film is told to the main character in the over caricatured and somewhat uncomfortable accent of his love interest played by Hong Chau (not really sure what to make of the accent). It is that bluntness that allows Downsizing to kind of get away with a lot of its more over the top and just batshit insane concepts, but also that bluntness that robs the film of any intimacy. This is a movie about people coming together in situations that drastically affect the human race, that the movie has nothing to say about other than, “Boy, this one white guy really can help these people,” and “Boy aren’t humans stupid?” That latter one is what most of Payne’s movies are about and in the more contained environments of a high school (Election) or just a friendship (Sideways) he is able to explore this concept in depth without actually getting out of his depth. Here, the ambition that Payne and co-writer Jay Taylor show simply outruns them leaving us with a movie that wants to extol the virtues of humanity on one hand while also take the piss out of them. Again, Payne does that a lot and does it well, but when dealing with big allegorical parts, the smoothness of Payne’s previous features is never present, here. Downsizing is trash but it is trash that only a director like Alexander Payne could make. Hopefully in the future, Payne steps back into a more intimate and focused tier of storytelling, but for now, in his attempt to create a visual effects (and actually pretty effective ones at that) bolstered drama he runs himself off the rails, failing to adequately explore the themes he wishes too and failing to make a great movie for what seems to be the first time. Downsizing gets a 4 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |