‘Up in the Air’ flies high
Meet Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing expert that works for a firm called Career Transition Counseling. Today, Mr. Bingham is going to come to your place of employment and tell you with an unsettling calm that your position at that company has been terminated after more than a decade of faithful service. As you react to the shock and disbelief, Mr. Bingham will hand you a packet that outlines what steps you should take to rebuild your life, but you already know that there is little more than empty promises to be found within. Mr. Bingham then leaves you to vainly regain composure and pick up the pieces of your shattered life, all because your boss did not have the stomach or the spine to do so themselves.
This is the painfully relevant climate of “Up in the Air,” the newest comedy-drama from Jason Reitman that is a fitting time capsule of the past decade and a one-two punch of a social commentary on the desperation of the economic downturn as well as technology’s chokehold on our ability to make meaningful personal connections.
George Clooney continues his high-quality streak by delivering a commanding performance which revolves from biting cynicism of the worst kind to sincere tenderness. But he is not alone; Vera Farmiga (“The Departed”) is Bingham’s counterpart and part-time lover Alex, who shares his wit and his sexual arousal for V.I.P. status and American Airlines Concierge keys. Anna Kendrick, a young actress from the “Twilight” films proves that some good may come from that series by delivering a true standout performance as Natalie Keener, a brilliant upstart that hopes to make Bingham’s job more efficient by implementing a system that can basically be summed up as “Skype firing.” I expect to see a lot more of her in the near future as her Academy Award-nomination is nearly guaranteed.
Director Jason Reitman has no need to prove himself since he exploded onto the scene with his sinfully witty breakthrough “Thank You For Smoking” in 2005.
Thankfully, he has returned to form after the critical darling but frustratingly flawed “Juno,” the dialogue of which was too self-consciously clever and quirky for its own sake to be believable for this reviewer. Reitman’s attention to detail and drive for authenticity is especially evident as several of the people that you see fired in this film are actually recently unemployed workers; when they react to being fired, there is an inescapable earnestness and honesty in their frustration and rejection which makes the film especially poignant.
When Ryan and Alex are talking in their hotel room across from one another with eyes glued to their laptops instead of each other, they are a true microcosm of the fast-food, one-hour photo, 21st century world in which the phrase “it is never too late” does not apply. When Bingham gives his motivational speech to businessmen about shedding relationships, he states, “Your relationships are the heaviest components in your life... The slower we move, the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star-crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.”
At the heart of the tragedy of this film is Bingham’s failure to see that it is the weight of the people we love that keeps us grounded and stable on a foundation that will last forever if it is mutually maintained; all the frequent flyer miles in the world cannot replace stability, but maybe Ryan Bingham was never meant for stability and it is his fate to be a nomad of the skies. In any case, rarely have I seen a movie as in touch with the times as “Up in the Air,” which gives Judd Apatow a run for his money in the melancholy comedy department and emerges not only as Reitman’s finest film but as the best film of the year.
