On Downsizing

​It is difficult to disagree with the message that Downsizing so precisely presents. One that we are slowly, but surely exhausting the earth's natural resources while contributing waste at an exponential rate. The combination of both requiring drastic solutions. This is where we find Downsizing early on, at a scientific conference where the drastic solution is being presented. There is much humour in this first third as it focuses on the process of downsizing, or getting small, and the level of detail that the writers have gone to in considering how such a procedure might be made realistic is impressive.  

As the film progresses and the humour moves aside for a closer examination of human responsibility, Downsizing explores some very interesting questions and seeks, in its detail, at times a scientific seeming script to provide answers. Regardless of the impossibility of the technology, the script, like many episodes of Black Mirror (2011 - ), feels well researched. This detail at times also bogs the film down in the actual, rather than taking more interesting or adventurous paths into the fantastical. Not that the film should attempt to be less realistic, especially after the work has been put in to root the film in a realistic base, but once it establishes its protagonist's journey, it sticks closely to this and, as a result, feels a little too long and predictable. 

Where a more interesting narrative thread may have taken the film is in the brief mention of the inevitable exploitation of the technology. The social inequality that exists in Leisure World (the premier small city) is an apt and important comment for the context of the film, but one we've seen before, even in Matt Damon's canon with 2013's Elysium. Early on, the film briefly touches on the technology being used by governments to punish, with a Vietnamese dissident becoming a character that reflects, but never really explores this. Moving further down such a path may have provided a more interesting narrative, where crime and race could have been addressed alongside the main message of environmental damage, which is set up so well at the start that it doesn't have to be addressed again.

There is a technology here that could lead to a darker tale, and a darker film that would benefit from the hands of a Charlie Brooker or José Saramago. Payne has taken the option of creating a safer, less critical film. One that is kinder on humanity than perhaps we deserve.