Movie Review: Up in the Air (2009)

Up in the Air (2009)

Directed By:
Jason Reitman

Starring:
George Clooney: Ryan Bingham
Vera Farmiga: Alex Goran
Anna Kendrick: Natalie Keener
Jason Bateman: Craig Gregory
J.K. Simmons: Bob
Sam Elliott: Maynard Finch
Danny McBride: Jim Miller
Zach Galifianakis: Steve

Rating:


The Dude Abides

Up in the Air isn't relevant to the way we live today in the way you'd expect. While it certainly seems timely, given that the movie is about a guy whose job is to fire people, Up in the Air really doesn't focus on those who suddenly have the crushing burden of unemployment thrust upon them. Instead, it's a film about the way many people choose to live today--willfully alone and isolated in an era in human history when our ability to connect with other human beings has never been easier.

The rapid transformation of the transportation and telecommunications sectors means two things for Ryan Bingham (George Clooney). Thanks to the airplane and the nature of his job, his home is the airport. His apartment is hardly lived in and the contents of his life fit comfortably in his suitcase. He lives his job--eats, sleeps, and breathes the recycled air, the carry-on bag, the hotel, car rental, the airline gold rewards cards and the little soaps and shampoos in the hotel bathroom. His bed is in any number of Hilton Hotels, his living room is the first class section of an American Airlines 747, and he wants for nothing more. He measures his worth by the number of frequent flier miles he has, and his only goal is getting to the number he'd like to have.

All of that is suddenly in jeopardy when George comes home to Omaha to find that a newcomer to his firm, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), has devised a new way to fire people: Over the internet. Natalie, a recent college grad, has never fired a person in her whole life, so naturally her cost-cutting plan is foolproof, as documented on a flowchart that assumes that a person's response to being fired will be dull-eyed resignation. Ryan, who doesn't want to be grounded in Omaha, argues otherwise and is assigned to take Natalie out on the road to see how things are done.

Not only does Natalie learn about the difficulty of firing a person she's never met, she learns a whole lot about Ryan. She looks at his life and considers it lonely, which is a pretty fair assessment. Ryan disagrees. Not only does he talk to plenty of single-serving friends, but he also has a relationship with Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), who lives the same life Alex does: Flying, landing, shuttling off between airport, hotel, and business. Doesn't he want something more than that?

That's the question at the center of the film. While it seems like one that Ryan would have no trouble answering, Natalie's unfailing belief in the power of love raises some doubts. He takes a small interest in his sister's wedding, then decides to go. He invites Alex and shows her around his hometown. The two look like they may have found something that works, but neither one is willing to commit.

Ryan Bingham, who gives speeches on the importance of maintaining as few contacts as possible, is an incredibly lonely person. For most of his adult life, he has been on the outside of humanity looking in through the incredibly small window afforded him by firing somebody face-to-face. Being so detached is an asset to his kind of work. He appears to care about a person's plight, but is not particularly moved. It's hard for a person to go on like that forever--even C.F. Kane didn't want to die alone. My favorite epigraph is the one from E.M. Forster's Howards End: "Only Connect." They may be the most important two words he ever wrote--two words that describe the bulk of human existence--a quest to connect and make meaningful relationships with others. Plenty of literature and plenty of movies attest to the importance of human connection--plot is the difficulty that lies in making such a connection matter. Up in the Air is an argument in favor of connection.

Director Jason Reitman deals with Ryan's problem by not treating it like a problem. Ryan isn't depressed because he's alone. He's not constantly putting his heart out there to be crushed. He's a believer in an empty life but makes two incredibly important connections without even realising it. Wisely, Reitman doesn't deal with the question of social media beyond the thought of firing somebody via webcam (the process is first tested, perhaps unwisely, in Detroit) and Natalie being broken-up with via text message. Facebook, Twitter, Skype, blogs, e-mail, and instant messaging allow us to talk to people from around the world instantaneously, but how connected are you to a person you've only talked to online? How connected are you to a classmate that Facebook reminds you to reconnect with? In that context, what is a "friend," and can a person really have 1,000 of them? Ryan wouldn't know--he's a soloist who thrives when it comes to making temporary connections in the flesh. Sure he's kind of a dinosaur, but he has no use for social media because he has no problem with being social.

I admired this movie. Everything about it. Clooney, Farmiga, and Kendrick are great, as are the actors that appear in smaller parts--Jason Bateman as Ryan's boss, J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis as fired employees, Danny McBride as a reluctant groom, and Sam Elliott as a Maynard Finch, whose role in all of this I won't spoil. The script is sly, witty, and doesn't try to draw attention to itself. The firing scenes, with one exception, don't go over the top--the employees reactions, and Natalie's reactions to them, feel organic and don't step wrong. "Organic" is a good word for the whole movie--Reitman avoids standard rom-com-dram conventions to the point that when one pops up, you hardly notice. A lesser director would have found the potential sentiment and schmaltz in Ryan's life, when connecting, which is as hard won as most movies portray it easy, is only schmaltzy and sentimental in retrospect. Great, fresh film making.