If you’ve been blown away this past year by the brilliant Hong Chau in The Menu and The Whale — for which she received a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination — be sure you have not missed her earlier terrific turn in 2017’s Downsizing.
This satirical science-fiction dramedy posits a technological advance that allows human beings to be shrunk down to five inches tall, in the name of saving the planet, and saving all-American consumerism in tight economic times. This is a stupendous movie: smart, funny, poignant, a true original, presented with a slightly comedic whiff of masstige chic, like you might pick up a new downsized lifestyle at Ikea.
But it’s dead serious in its theme about how the benefits of gleaming new tech flow mostly to the already comfortable, like Matt Damon’s downsized suburbanite, while the downsides tend to disproportionately impact the already disadvantaged, like Chou’s political prisoner shrunk as punishment, and still living without privilege in the supposed new utopia. Sounds about right. (Read my review.)
US: stream on Paramount+ (via Prime); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See Downsizing at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
