Downsizing

A revolutionary idea at best — downsizing humans to about 5 inches tall with a promise of prosperity both personal and environmental is a striking premise for an emotional scientific drama and Matt Damon’s Downsizing scores well on that count.

But like all of Hollywood’s adventurous science-oriented ventures, this one too bloats on the hocus pocus of a dying humanity and its planet, poverty, disease, globalised oppression of the poor, some lab wonders and a lot of drama around the very concept of downsizing to make it look real, contentious and debatable all at the same time.

Damon (Paul), an occupational therapist with a middle class life and wife dealing with bills and mortgages on one side and dreams of a big-life-big-house vertical journey on the other, is slowly but surely drawn by the concept of downsizing and eventually persuades his rather sceptical but loving wife to join the community of the small.

As the film slowly gets to the main point, Paul becomes small but with a big problem, something that will spoil the pleasure of the film if revealed here. And then start all the diversions from the theme. Sometimes, a linear approach helps in cinema and this one would have done better had it struck to encasing the concept of this unprecedented change which not only would save planet Earth from extinction but also save mother Nature from certain death and billions of dollars that go into the upkeep of normal sized people as we know them today.

However, once shrunk, Paul is made to venture into territories that make the same difference — poverty, poor-rich divide, corruption, regression and more such that plague our myopic world. In comes a cantankerous Vietnamese former dissident who has survived the TB box as she calls it (Vietnam’s Gulag) and has opted to join the downsized community, albeit without assets that can pull her above the poverty line.

A short romance, lingering daily-life mores and a journey into a safe, utopian world is the aim — but sadly somewhat waylaid with too many — expected — interwoven themes that intrude more than mingle with the basic concept of the film. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 14 January, 2018