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OT: "Downsizing" -- Payne's Best -- or Worst -- or Somewhere In Between SPOILERS

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I went to see Downsizing having skimmed one review that said "it is the masterpiece that replaces Sideways as the masterpiece of Alexander Payne" and another that gave it one-and-one-half stars(Roger Ebert's website) for, basically, wasting a fascinating premise and going nowhere with it.

Hmm. This happens from time to time. One man's masterpiece is another man's failure.

So I went and found the film...somewhere in between.

It is not the masterpiece that Sideways(my favorite movie of 2004) was, in the Payne collection. Nor(to me, of course) is it as good as The Descendants(my second favorite movie of 2011) was, or that About Schmidt was(though, intriguingly, the film shares the most WITH Schmidt.) I liked it better than Nebraska (Bruce Dern's return to late fame), and I liked it better than Payne's highly regarded "Election"(a big early one in the Payne canon, but a hard watch given the very unlikeable characters.) And I haven't seen Payne's first one about the young woman caught between pro-life and pro-choice forces.

Hey, that's the whole Alexander Payne canon, right there. Like Kubrick and like QT so far, Payne hasn't made many movies. Indeed, much as QT took six years off between Jackie Brown and Kill Bill 1, Payne took SEVEN years off between Sideways(of which he said, "even I think its overrated) and The Descendants. So a movie like Downsizing doesn't have much competition, but can slide down the list pretty quickly when not "buried in 53 films"(as Hitchcocks movies could be.)

The greatness of Sideways crept up on me. I liked it on the first viewing, very much, but it took about four more to get more fully into it, to have a sense that I was even coming close to getting it.

It was, famously, about two middle-aged guys -- once college roomates at San Diego State -- who go on a road trip north of LA to the Central Coast wine country and "have adventures." But very SMALL adventures. One gets sex, one finds love. One gets his face bashed in with a motorcycle helmet, and has to run naked through an Ostrich farm. The other gets his car wrecked, and has sneak into a house to retrieve a wallet from a bedroom while two very overweight naked people are having sex on their bed. And that's about it, "plot wise." But oh, everything else -- the characterizations, the dialogue, the in-depth discussion of wine, the pain of career failure and lost love.

And this, as just two thoughts about the film: (1) This is a "bachelor party" for one of the guys, where he can only attract ONE OTHER GUY to join him(think about it) and (2) at film's end, the giant novel that one guy can't get published turns out to win back a lost love -- because SHE read it, and liked it. Failed projects can be big wins in other contexts.

And this: as a matter of "personal biography," I liked what "Sideways" posits: you're going on that yearly trip with some guy friends to drive somewhere, play golf, eat, and drink. You don't know, when you start off, exactly what's going to happen. Three days later, you come back -- and you DID have an adventure. Maybe a really small one, maybe with only a few memorable things happening but...it was unexpected. And the trip was worth taking. "Sideways" got that.

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Downsizing shares with Sideways certain things: a sense of pace; the music, which has a certain whimsy to it(actually, the score in Downsizing more directly lines up with the score in About Schmidt, and both films are about a rather boring man who lives and works in Omaha), a certain occasional snobbery about people who eat in buffets or go to bowling alleys(Payne hit this note most hard with the middle-class schlubs of Schmidt, though I felt he was being real rather than snobbish...exploring their world.)

But most of what I think Downsizing shares with Sideways is: I think I'll need to see it a few times to "get" it. At least get it better. What IS Payne trying to say with this movie?

For instance, the film posits something interesting I think: the reason Matt Damon and his wife Kirsten Wiig decide to irrevocably change their size to just a few inches -- never able to go back to the size they were, making one of those decisions you can never back away from -- is this: they're strapped for cash and being teeny-tiny people will make them millionaires. Without the financial incentive, the massive life change of downsizing would be too scary and horrible a life change. With the financial incentive: you'd do it. (Well, THEY would do it.)

And thus the inverse idea emerges: this downsizing thing is a way for the more successful in society to literally rid themselves of their economic losers.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The film in one early scene -- before Matt and Kirsten make the plunge to little people -- has an overt political argument. A mean drunk guy in a bar comes up to them and starts attacking them for downsizing -- "Should you get a vote equal to mine? You're not paying taxes! You're not contributing to society up here anymore! You're escaping the rat race." A sizeable male friend of Damon's steps up to the drunk and pushes him away, and the scene feels real and nasty and suddenly one realizes that another theme of Downsizing is: Envy. Plus: Dislike of the Other.

Downsizing is unlike any other Alexander Payne film, of course, because of its reliance on special effects to give us these little teeny tiny people in juxtaposition -- perfectly, no seams, no blue screen lines -- with regular-sized people. As the trailer suggested, it is a marvel to watch whenever the small are shown in context with "the big."

And the film gets great mileage out of the rather sterile and creepy downsizing process itself -- Damon and others are stripped naked in unflattering light, shaved of all hair(head, eyebrows, genitals) , "put to sleep" and then processed by an unnervingly "regular joe worker" squad of hired help who complete the process and use spatulas to pick up the tiny specimens as if they were pancakes. A great, imaginative sequence -- with MORE food for thought -- is a human being at five inches tall LESS than human?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

What I'm about to say is a spoiler only if you haven't seen the second trailer to Downsizing, but it is a spoiler: Damon completes the Downsizing process and arrives in "Leisure World" only to find out(via a cell phone call) that his wife got cold feet and backed out of the process(she was in the Women's Downsizing unit.) The massive lifechange was simply too much for her to bear, and she could only follow her husband so far. Another little theme: in marriage, men often find that women sign on for only so much, only so far...and if they don't like it...gone. Soon teeny-tiny Matt Damon is putting a teeny-tiny signature on divorce papers signed by Kirsten in Big Giant Regular People writing.

The FIRST trailer for Downsizing (like, it occurs to me, the only trailer for Matt Damon's flop Suburbicon) refused to relate what the movie was really going to be about. In Suburbicon, the trailer promised a Coen-brothers like comedy crime film -- but left out the part about the persecution of a black family in suburbia. In Downsizing, the trailer promises a whimsical world of little people, with deft SNL comedians Wiig and Jason Sudekis(a great, underused handsome comedy star) helping Damon along on his adventure.

Nope. THAT movie disappears about halfway through, Wiig and Sudekis disappear, and events take a turn for the grim and the philosophical. Weird: after awhile, since all the scenes are AMONG little people, we forget that they've been downsized. It starts to play like a regular movie, with regular sized-people.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

She's gotten Golden Globe notice and might get Oscar notice, but an Asian actress comes in to take over "Downsizing" and I found the character rather "affected." She plays one of the poor people in this shrunken world; she has lost a leg and does cleaning lady work to survive. She goes from tough and practical and bullying to a sponge-face full of tears in a millisecond; actors' tricks that will bait Oscar but become tough to take. Some have written that she takes over the movie from Damon. I didn't think so -- like most established stars, Damon's role is to give us "a familiar face," somebody we know and like, to anchor this weirdly abstract tale. But the woman certainly subverts Damon's star role. It becomes "all about her."

And Christoph Waltz as a delightful sidebar. In fact, to finish this up, I'd like to shift to a discussion of Waltz in this film,and, ultimately, Damon in this film.

Which looks to be a flop.

As some critic wrote, "Christoph Waltz does his Christoph Waltz schtick" in Downsizing, and I loved it. I swear he delivers one short speech with the exact cadence and exact hand gestures he used in the early saloon scene in Django. He's not an Oscar darling anymore, we're all used to him but I say -- bring it on. Waltz lifts Downsizing up the moment he appears on screen. Richard Boone and Robert Preston are long-dead; Rip Torn is elderly and retired -- I say let's keep Christoph Waltz around for the flamboyant, big-gesture entertainment value of his acting style.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Waltz is cleverly cast as the big talking Cool Guy to Matt Damon's reserved, plain nebbish. The newly-single Damon finds out that Waltz is his upstairs neigbhor -- and totally into partying all the time, sex, drinking, dancing, drugs, the whole deal. Waltz for his part at once admires the forthright Damon and is out to spice up his life a bit. Best of all: Waltz has a roomate, played by that spooky vampire-looking Eurofilm actor Udo Kier. If Downsizing has a satirical heart, it is Waltz and Udo invading the pristine all-white Disneyland of "Downsizing" with their Eurotrash wildness(and, it turns out, hearts of gold.)

And recall that Udo Kier was the star of the "Grindhouse" trailer "Werewolf Women of the SS" that appeared alongside QT's Death Proof. So Waltz and Udo make sure that this is an Alexander Payne film with a QT twist.

Nice: dominating Waltz's swinging bachelor pad is a gigantic photograph of Young Christoph Waltz, a huge cigar sticking out of his teeth in a trademark Big Christoph Waltz smile. I laughed at the sheer comic egotism of what has to be a real photo.

But Waltz is the side deal to the Emotional Asian Actress and Matt Damon. It all comes down to them and some environmental-related twists at the end that I, for one, didn't fully understand. I don't quite think these twists meant what they were supposed to mean. I felt an Art Film happening, and a in a good way. And my mind will linger on a question: Damon is disturbed to learn, when he thinks he is joining a survivalist group walking DOWN to the center of the earth, that they are actually walking UP. What gives? Damon's pondering of that question will always matter to me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Now on Mr. Damon. Years ago, Downsizing was to star Paul Giamatti, right after Sideways. Well, that fell through and now we have a more generic Accepted Movie Star in the movie. That Damon is a movie star who has lasted a long time is undeniable. Whether or not that will continue is debatable.

The trade papers and the political gossip rags are pointing out that Damon had three big bombs this year: The Great Wall, Suburbicon, and now Downsizing(which is evidently flopping.) Is the problem...Matt Damon.

For the take is this: Damon already lost Red State Republican fans by professing things like W. wasn't his President and Trump can't be impeached soon enough. Fair enough -- and not really hurtful. Plenty of Dems and Indies buy movie tickets.

But the attack on Damon is now from the LEFT, too -- the Weinstein thing. A petition is circulating to have Damon's cameo removed from the all-woman-caper "Ocean's Eight." He's been targeted.

So supposedly no Reps will go to Damon's movies and no Dems will now, either.

I dunno. I think there will be some struggle, but Damon still has fans.

His stardom is based on one franchise -- Bourne. He pulled off a surprise hit movie a coupla years ago: The Martian. He was very good in True Grit. And he was with the boys in the old Ocean's movies, but those are a decade old now.

Sprinkled among those hits are a whole lotta movies that didn't do well (I Bought a Zoo) and...well...it remains to be seen if his career is really over or not.

Matt Damon fits Downsizing well. He's truly an everyman in this, wide-eyed and innocent and caring, a bit plump and doughy(I thought he lost the Suburbicon weight; nope.) A more charismatic actor wouldn't have worked -- and Paul Giamatti might have been TOO nerdy.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Time to dust off critic Anthony Lane's insult about the too-young Matt Damon when he became an action star years ago: "In another era, Cary Grant would have given Matt Damon his keys to park his car." True. In another era. But that was then, this is now, and once-boyish, now-doughy Matt Damon seems to be the Everyman we need.

Or needed.

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In About Schmidt near the end, Nicholson's doughy old guy stops to take in a "Nebraska pioneer history" exhibit near a freeway. The tour is all every sterile and Disneylandish and a bit satirical: American history for white people. Downsizing plays like that -- again the scores(both by Nick Rolfe) are almost identical. As are the edits, deadpan close ups, "air pockets of silence."

In short, if you like Alexander Payne films, rest assured, Downsizing feels and sounds and moves like all the rest of them. There's a comfort level to that kind of auteurism. Its what Hitchcock was talking about when he said the plots were secondary to his movies -- the style came first.

I liked Downsizing. I didn't love it. And I will most certainly see it again in my quest to "get it."

Along exactly the same lines: I want to see Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut "Molly's Game" soon. QT has called Sorkin the best dialogue writer in Hollywood; well, he's one of them (QT is the other.) Sorkin's scripts powered Charlie Wilson's War(my favorite film of 2007) and Moneyball(my favorite film of 2011) and his A Few Good Men script was great even BEFORE Jack's big speeches(Tom Cruise has many, many, many hilarious lines.)

The gimmick with Molly's Game is: Sorkin Directs for the First Time (one of his great scripts.) And Jessica Chastain is a good actress here fine with wearing breast dresses to play a poker parlor power broker (they're callnig her "Jessica Chest-ain.") Plus Kevin Costner as HER DAD. (What happened?) I'm in.

Alexander Payne and Aaron Sorkin. Guarantors of at least a good time at the movies. Sometimes, something more.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Thanks for the review. I have to admit that Downsizing's premise, if I understand it correctly, sounds more Charlie Kaufman or Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, Dogtooth) than Alexander Payne - like the sort of thing that requires a cold-eyed, steel-trap mind to work through all the weirdest and most ghastly consequences. Is Payne too warm and humanist to get the most out of this idea?

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"Warm and humanist" strikes me as spot on as to what Payne has given us in his best films(even with unlikeable characters or cynical, almost snobbish views of the middle class) and it is what is rather missing from Downsizing indeed. Payne pours on SOME humanism with the Asian female character, but she feels more in the service of symbolism than human connection.

I write this having just finished another look at "The Descendants," which I remember liking so much in 2011 that I gave it my top slot until I finally rented "Moneyball" a few months later. "The Descendants" opens strong with George Clooney's wife comatose and on life support -- tears flow early on and the rest of the story is "controlled" by other difficult pressures on Clooney(he's the trustee who can make himself and all his cousins rich -- or not -- if he sells some historic Hawaii land owned by his family for generation) and some solid comic moments. But it is -- start to finish -- a film of very strong emotion and sadness. "Downsizing" keeps finding those moments and losing them in the need to pitch the SciFi stuff at the beginning and the Meaning of Life stuff at the end. When I finished "The Descendants" again, I thought: "Yep, as I remembered, really emotionally rewarding a rich, start to finish." "Downsizing" doesn't come close. It IS a miss.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Speaking of "Moneyball," this:

In 2011, two competing Oscar hits were "Moneyball"(written by Aaron Sorkiln in his rat-a-tat style, even with a name co-writer, you heard only Sorkin) and "The Descendants"(directed and co-written by Alexander Payne.) They were Best Picture nominees, Best Actor nominees(pals Clooney and Pitt pitted against each other -- no wonder the Academy gave the award to that French guy for The Artist instead.) Big deals.

Comes now 2017 and both the Payne picture (Downsizing) and the Sorkin picture(Molly's Game) have virtually no Oscar heat at all(save Effects for Downsizing and Actress for Jessica Chastain), and the Payne picture is a flop. 6 years took some wind of the sails of these two thoughtful entertainers.

That said, I've seen Molly's Game and, it delivers the Sorkin goods quite well -- much better than Downsizing presents for Payne.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Relatedly (if you bear with me!) I recently saw Colossal (2017), an Anne Hathaway flick from the Spanish writer-director of Timecrimes (2007) with the fanciful premise that depressed alkie Hathaway discovers that her drunken stumbles through a kids' playground in upstate NY trigger corresponding movements of a giant kaiju monster/creature in Seoul.

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I read reviews of this premise and chuckled. Hardly "high concept"!

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The film's not bad (though the unlikablility of *all* the characters and some nasty domestic violence makes it a tough watch for many I'd say)

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Domestic violence...rather deflates the whimsicality of the concept, I would guess.

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but it's not great, let alone mind-blowing. If Kaufman or Lanthimos or Rod Serling, say, had been in charge (or even just done a rewrite), it's a good bet that Colossal would have dug deeper, been better. Maybe it's bad to lament/compare like this while watching, but that's me!

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One of the toughest things about having a knowledge of truly great films(be they Art or Commerce) is having to acknowledge when interesting ideas just don't play out -- a good, not great film; a film you like, not love.

I expect this is more of a problem for you than for me, swanstep.

In fact, I'm having an odd issue trying to decide if I HAVE a favorite film of 2017, even as quite a few have impressed and entertained me in my own way.

This week, it was clear to me that "Molly's Game" really worked for me(just like favorites Charlie Wilson's War and Moneyball did from Sorkin), but "Downsizing" did not. A surprise, but one that gives me clear guidance. "Molly's Game" is on my short list for my favorite film of the year; Downsizing is not.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And thus "Molly's Game" joins "Baby Driver," "Logan Lucky" "Wonder Woman"(even though I have skipped Justice League) and, eh, something else I've seen this fall as favorites. All of these films had me walking out of the theater satisfied; none of them feels like anything close to a classic.

On the other hand, as entertainments of quality, this little cluster isn't all that removed from , say, 1960, when one had Psycho, The Apartment, The Magnificent Seven and Spartacus(among my favorites) to choose from, and all of them were good and entertaining in certain ways. Its as if, if one takes the "classic" or blockbuster elements away, its still four films in 1960 and four films in 2017 that I enjoyed and could easily watch again.

I haven't decided on "one" yet.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

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