On a tour, Paul and Audrey are impressed by the faux mansion-style elegance and amenities - the grandiose doors and entryways, gaudy chandeliers and fire places, polished furniture, big pools and golf courses. At a school class reunion they meet old friends (Jason Sudeikis and Maribeth Monroe in peppy cameos) who have gone small and rave about life at Leisureland, a planned community for the teeny where everything is pristine, well-manicured and ultra-cheap. Fortyish and childless, the couple can see their future pretty clearly and it’s not a glorious sight. Ten years on, the focus settles on ordinary lives, not quite the low-end, small-town ones on view in Payne’s last film, Nebraska, but just-getting-by, vaguely middle-class folks like Omaha Steaks occupational therapist Paul Safranek (a suitably chubbed-out Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig). Payne has made the interesting choice of not involving the government in the program at all - the scientific initiative didn’t come from Washington, nor does funding, as it’s strictly a private enterprise undertaking. This marks the revolution, albeit one that will occur in very slow motion citizens are not coerced into going small, but make the decision for themselves, albeit with plenty of persuasive promotion that stresses the great financial upside, improved lifestyle and environmental benefit. Jorgen AsbJornsen (Rolf Lassgard, memorable last year as the old curmudgeon in A Man Called Ove) stuns the crowd both by announcing that his project of shrinking human beings is now a reality and proving it by appearing in his new guise as a five-inches-tall man alongside his test “community of the small.” They all happily sing the praises of the transformation (and, in Payne’s one conceit, speak at full-sized normal volume, not in mouse-like squeaks). The setup definitely makes you lean in: At an international sustainability conference, Norwegian elder statesmen Dr.
DOWNSIZING MOVIESHARE MOVIE
At the same time, the movie is a highly sophisticated creation that, due to its off-hand, underplayed presentation of the future, essentially seems to be taking place in the present day. As such, this is a unique undertaking, one centered on an unexceptional Everyman character who unwittingly embarks upon an exceptional life journey in that sense, Matt Damon’s Paul Safranek is like the hero of a Frank Capra or Preston Sturges film of 75 years ago, an ordinary man who has a certain sort of greatness thrust upon him.
0 kommentar(er)
