{"id":986,"date":"2018-03-06T15:00:38","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T22:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=986"},"modified":"2018-02-04T09:31:40","modified_gmt":"2018-02-04T16:31:40","slug":"movie-downsizing-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/06\/movie-downsizing-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Downsizing (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/a\/a8\/Downsizing.png\" alt=\"Downsizing\" width=\"220\" height=\"343\" \/>Downsizing<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2017<br \/>\nRating: R<br \/>\nLength: 135 minutes \/ 2.25 hours<\/p>\n<p>In the last decade, I\u2019ve come to appreciate Alexander Payne\u2019s films. From\u00a0<em>The Descendants\u00a0<\/em>(2011) to\u00a0<em>Nebraska<\/em>\u00a0(2013), it was clear he was improving as a director. I had high hopes for his latest work,\u00a0<em>Downsizing<\/em>\u00a0(2017) since the premise seemed interesting and ripe for social satire like his previous films. For a movie about becoming small,\u00a0<em>Downsizing<\/em>\u00a0certainly had big ambitions. Unfortunately, it means that this film was kind of all over the place. Sure, there was a somewhat logical progression of events, but even the main character was flabbergasted at the coincidence of it all.<\/p>\n<p>While I would fault the movie for Hong Chau\u2019s clipped English, as it almost seemed culturally insensitive at first, eventually the character grows on the viewer. This leads to a very touching ending. Instead, I will fault the science behind this science fiction. I was half-expecting a lot of sight gags on how ordinary objects are much bigger with shrunken humans (a la\u00a0<em>The Borrowers<\/em>), which\u00a0<em>Downsizing<\/em>\u00a0delivered on a couple of times. However, if inorganic material cannot be shrunk, then how are there whole communities with small-scale items (like lightbulbs, prosthetics, etc.) that would need to be manufactured in the smaller scale?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m still trying to get my head around how cerebral this movie was. With no clear focus (and a few sequences that were a smidge too long), I had trouble determining if the satire was on the contrast between rich and poor (paralleled with big vs. small), or if it was a statement about human interaction with the environment. I get that the term \u201cdownsizing\u201d is\u00a0applied in many aspects of this film, from the actual shrinking process to shedding all the meaningless materialism of our existences, but even the open-ended ending left me wanting just a little bit more closure on everything.<\/p>\n<p>A semi-comedy that is probably too smart for its own good, I give\u00a0<em>Downsizing<\/em>\u00a03.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<\/strong><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<\/strong><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Downsizing Year: 2017 Rating: R Length: 135 minutes \/ 2.25 hours In the last decade, I\u2019ve come to appreciate Alexander Payne\u2019s films. From\u00a0The Descendants\u00a0(2011) to\u00a0Nebraska\u00a0(2013), it was clear he was improving as a director. I had high hopes for his latest work,\u00a0Downsizing\u00a0(2017) since the premise seemed interesting and ripe for social satire like his previous [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,2],"tags":[349,1134,1133,13,1135,8,1136],"class_list":["post-986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-movie","tag-349","tag-alexander-payne","tag-downsizing","tag-movie","tag-nebraska","tag-review","tag-the-descendants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":988,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}