TonyAtTheMovies

The idea of miniaturisation isn't a new one in fiction - think of the 1950s film The Incredible Shrinking Man and at least one Doctor Who story where the TARDIS crew find themselves in a 'giant' world - but this film has a different, ecological and social, angle. For a start, over the story's timespan thousands of people are being miniaturised, creating their own communitiy and giving rise to issues of difference and prejudice. This particular story charts one man's journey through this and how he meets these issues. To say that the film is ecological/social in its approach doesn't make it heavy or 'preachy' as the issues grow quite naturally out of the scenario of so many people becoming 'small' (rather than a lone individual or small group as in many previous stories with the same plot device). The film's director has said that he didn't want to make an especially political movie - it's just that the situation in the movie quickly takes on political aspects, as situations often do in real life. But as a movie Downsizing is very watchable, and a very humane story. It's billed as a comedy, whereas I would place it under 'Comedy-Drama' - it's not laugh-out-loud material but there are some nicely observed moments in it. Oh, and in case you're wondering, at no point do any of the protagonists get chased by a King Kong-sized cat etc.

This movie proceeds at the relaxed pace its protagonists live at, but there are key moments in the plot which mean that the movie doesn't just amble along to nowhere in particular (but at the same time these moments don't feel contrived). There's a great sense of place and landscape, which you might expect from a movie set mostly outdoors - a real feeling of 'lives in a landscape' among the characters, these are people whose lives have all been defined by their landscape, either in working with it or wanting to fight against it and move away. For the protagonists, being 'from L.A.' makes them objects of fascination or loathing. But they find companionship and fellow-feeling as well as opposition along the way, so all is not lost even when it might seem to be. Which is no bad impression of life to take from any movie.

Having not known quite what to expect from this movie - had it been made anytime before 30 years ago that might have been easier - I actually found it fascinating, and it held my attention the whole way through. Based on a true story, it paints a vivid picture not only of the Amazonian region which Percy Fawcett and his men set out to explore, but also of the Western society they came from, but in a fairly balanced way - this didn't feel like another case of 'weren't Western white people before 1980 all absolutely dreadful' but rather a portrayal of a society with its own beliefs and attitudes (as all societies have) faced with the prospect of discovering another, much older, civilisation.

This wouldn't be a film for fans of action movies as such. Instead it offers a fascinating study of place, society and the often slow and hazardous process of discovery and its effect on the people - all of the people - involved.