movie review - Downsizing
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This confounding movie begins (more or less) with a couple's decision to shrink themselves to live in an eco-friendly fashion as miniature humans in a miniature domed habitat. It follows what happens when the wife bails, leaving the husband alone in this state. He eventually becomes entrained in world events as the climate crisis starts to kick in. He then becomes exposed to the world's growing outcry over the economics of supporting these miniaturized people, and then is introduced to the (largely non-white) underclass of miniaturized people who serve the (majority white) landed class who spend all their time in a haze of partying. You'll note I say "becomes" a lot because he somehow stumbles through these things. It's not like he comes across them while doing his thing, he's not really doing anything at all.
Finally motivated to do something by a cleaner he meets, he sets out to see what else is out there but discovers that wherever we go we're building new sets of problems. For instance he travels to Scandinavia to find a colony of miniaturized people who've decided to spend millennia underground in isolation for reasons that feel frankly hazy.
I don't recommend this movie because you have to invest a lot to get anything out of it and I'm not sure that's a good thing. After watching it I looked into it and found that the writer-director also created "The Descendants" and "Sideways", both of which I found struck a decent note on the humanity of dealing with life. "The Descendants" is a movie I think about fairly regularly, there were a number of things in there that stuck with me. And "Sideways" is by no means a perfect movie but to this day I identify with its protagonist, the failed writer. Somehow this one doesn't reach the level of "Sideways" let alone "The Descendants".
Man, I've written 3x as much on this one as I usually do. Confounding movie. Not recommended.
P.S. I met someone who was in this movie. He was a fellow who lives out-doors in Toronto year round, asking for change at Lake Shore and Leslie. He had a tent until the city bulldozed that. He was approached by this movie's makers to be in the film and said he appears in the background of a scene set on the beach in Norway. I found his story - as little as I've told in this paragraph - stuck with me more than this movie.