Leo Adam Biga's My Inside Stories

Hot Movie Takes – The Dundee and “Downsizing”

©by Leo Adam Biga, Author of “Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film”

A Hollywood premiere, Omaha style, unfurled December 15 at the newly made-over Dundee Theater. Favorite son Alexander Payne and star-is-born Hong Chau represented their beautiful new film “Downsizing” at the neighborhood movie house’s grand reopening.

The night’s main attraction screening served up a rare occurrence – a film that largely lived up to the hype surrounding it. With this film Payne has taken themes he’s long been concerned with and married them to planetary issues to produce a work of large scale and big ideas that’s grounded in intimate relationships.

The story imagines Scandinavian scientists finding a process by which humans can be downsized to help mitigate overpopulation and depleted natural resources.

Everyman Paul Safranek of Omaha transitions into the small world, where he meets up with a cosmo Serbian importer, Dusan, and a fierce Vietnamese human rights activist, Ngoc Lan Tran. The supposed paradise of the miniature Leisure Land they live in is a lie, as normal-sized problems of greed, laziness, consumerism and classism are actually magnified there. Outside Leisure Land, abuses of the downsizing process as reprisals strip it of its utopian ideal. Then, with the end of the world drawing near due to melting ice caps, Paul enlists as a pioneer in a bold move to preserve the human species from extinction. At the crucial hour, he must choose between living fully now or giving up this life to be a symbol for a new age.

From the festival circuit through the Omaha premiere, the critical and popular consensus is that Payne’s created his most visually stunning. humanistic and moving picture yet. Certainly his most ambitious. From the moment the story moves from Paul’s drab normal existence to the brave new small world, we’re treated to memorable images: from a Euro party acid trip to a makeshift ghetto housing project to breathtaking Norwegian fjords to a tribe of tree-huggers saying farewell to the world.

Chau is well deserving of the Best Supporting Actress nominations she’s received because her original character anchors the second half of the film and her authentic, heartfelt performance carries the story home. Christoph Waltz is his usual sardonic, charismatic self. Matt Damon delivers the goods as the sweet, slightly pathetic protagonist we project ourselves onto.

The perfect dream Film Streams founder-director Rachel Jacobson had of reopening the theater Payne grew up in with the premiere of his new film is like something from a movie. And in a it-could-only-happen-in-Omaha moment, Payne shared how he walked to the theater the night of the big event because, well, he could. His childhood home, where his mother Peggy still lives, is only four blocks away. The main auditorium at the Dundee is named in her honor, The final credit is a dedication to his late father: “For George.”

The high aesthetics of both the theater and of the movie crowning its rebirth befitted the formal, black-tie December 15 affair whose blue-blood audience helped realize the Film Streams-Dundee marriage. Chau looked every bit the part of a movie star. Payne, the new father, appeared fit and content. Two of Nebraska’s three most famous living figures were in the same room chatting it up: Payne and fellow Diundee resident, Warren Buffett. The billionaire investor’s daughter, Susie Buffett, purchased the Dundee and donated it to Film Streams through her Sherwood Foundation. Susie Buffett was there, too.

It was a celebration all the way around:

Film Streams adding to its inventory of cinema resources and enhancing the local cinema culture

A preservation victory that saved and returned the Dundee to its former glory

A homecoming for Payne

A coming-out party for Chau.

A coronation for what promises to be Payne’s biggest box-office hit and possibly his most awarded film to date.

On a night when the theater and the film shared equal billing, it was hard not to recall all the great cinema moments the Dundee’s offered since the 1920s. Downsizing may not be the best film to ever play there, but it’s safely among the best. It’s also safe to say that the theater’s never looked better. The historic redo features simple, clean designs accented by a black-and-white motif and a new entrance, restaurant and video-bookstore so well integrated into the existing works that they look and feel as though they’ve always been there.

Alley Poyner Macchietto melded the historic and contemporary elements into a pleasing whole in much the same way Payne and his visual effects team blended the film’s CGI and live action into seamless scenes. When the big and small worlds converge onscreen, they hold up as more than arresting set pieces but as compelling dramatic and amusing comedic moments that comment on the smallness of some people’s minds and that size doesn’t really matter.

Just when Payne’s message movie gets too polemical or idealogical, he pokes fun at something to take it down to size. This hugely entertaining movie reminds us, not unlike a Frank Capra movie, that we don’t have to go far or to extremes to find the best things in life, but if we do, it’s best to keep things simple and close to home.

Kudos, too, for Payne taking us on this journey. All of his films are journeys or odysseys of one kind or another, “Downsizing” is the most provocative journey he’s given us yet in one of his films. He and co-writer Jim Taylor went global with this story and therefore we see a diverse, international cast of characters unlike anything we’ve seen in his work. Powerful images and storylines depict the range of humanity and the ways in which people of different cultures , circumstances and beliefs live. Because of the politically charged climate the film resides in both in its fictional story and in real life, these images and plot points are loaded with multiple meanings and interpretations. By the end, we’re left with a positive affirmation about the beauty and folly of human nature and with a challenge to protect and preserve Mother Earth.

Thanks for the message, and welcome back home, Alexander.