George Clooney has come full circle in his stardom. Getting a romantic and engaging ‘time-out’ with Jennifer Lopez after she blows off a couple of traveling corporate types flirting in the lounge, his character in the latest Jason Reitman comedy, Ryan Bingham, is exactly one of those transient and boring corporate drones. Being George Clooney (particularly in a suit) he still manages to find a willing and no-strings-attached lady friend in the gorgeous and mature Vera Farmiga. But I am getting ahead of myself here, Ryan makes a living downsizing employees for corporations timid (for personal or legal reasons) of doing the dirty work (involuntary severance packages). This means a lot of time on the road between auto companies and banking institutions, you know the places hit the hardest in late 2008.
Bingham has also downsized his own life, whether because of the emotional toll his job takes (albeit is is damn good at it), or for other less clear reasons, to become the self-described “wealthiest homeless man in America.” No long term relationships and little connection with his extended family, he is happy to only spend a small fraction of the year in his tiny barely adorned apartment. Instead his existence is all transience and freedom; in hotel suites, courtesy lounges and other travel-holding zones across America. All the while collecting loyalty points. Lots and lots of Loyalty points. It is not the money or the ability to travel around the world several times on his accumulated tally, it is the status of the thing. He is proud and confident to skip airport and check-in, to board and exit airports in the most efficient manner possible rewarded by his status, but also has the goal of hitting a point total that earns him a recognition only 7 other people have achieved in their lifetime (“less than have walked on the moon”) and he is well under 50.
Much like his life, his baggage is smallest of carry on bags packed efficiently with neat, anonymous suits and toiletries. Rolling smoothly along from town to town he also gives paid talks on how to be the most efficient business traveler, using an empty backpack as a metaphor for mobility and movement as a metaphor for life. Material things like a house or a car weigh you down, and relationships are the heaviest, he pontificates to the other road warriors. The philosophy he spouts in his ballroom seminars is practically a pithy and institutionalized version of Tyler Durden’s 20th century ‘freedom-from-stuff monologues’ in Fight Club. Ironic that Bingham (the shiny mirror image of ragged Durden) is often wearing that cornflower blue tie to match his pressed suits. Philosophy is so malleable these days.
His job is to set people adrift from their own lives, and make them feel better about circumstances beyond their control. The irony (and wit) of the film is that he too is about to be set adrift. His job (and quest for travel points) is about obsolete (downsized, if you will) as a pretty, bright young thing (Rocket Scientist’s Anna Kendrick) sells his boss on firing people via a screen-to-screen set-up over the Internet. It is quite depressing to see people lose their jobs, visualized in a serious of snappy vignettes (cameos from J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis are superb) and a testament to the script and the direction that this is indeed charming and funny to watch. Amusing that the snake-eating-its-own-tail (Enron, sub-prime lenders) needs to downsize the downsizers and this enabled by someone too young to know anything of life. More interested in realizing career and relationship goals (right down to the brand of car and khakis on her husband) to factor in the humanity of firing a career employee without even a face to face. Clooney convinces his boss to let him show her the ropes to improve her system. This will hopefully show the futility (and fundamental lack of dignity) of the new system and earn himself a few more miles, while enabling him a few more sexy trysts with fellow road-warrior (and aggressively anti-commitment). It is a balance of road movie and home-movie when eventually Clooneys family life via his niece’s wedding, begins to intrude and put his fast moving for the sake of moving life into some perspective. Up in The Air has a knock out of a script, with lots of twists and turns that completely defy any of the genres (the road movie, the romantic comedy, the fish-out-of-water comedy) that it effortlessly blends.
Perhaps the most timely movie for the left and right coasts of America at the moment, Up in the Air, manages the rare balancing act of making immediate, up-to-the-minute tragedy both warm and funny. But there is much more on the films plate than simply laughing-to-prevent-from-crying at the current state of America, the film delves into life philosophy, behavior etiquette in the modern world and simple human dignity in ways that only a good comedy can. Chaplin, Keaton, Capra, Wilder, even Woody Allen all have excelled in humourous filmmaking that really looks at the choices we have to continually make daily; both the big reaching ones and the tiny minutiae and how they intermingle in surprising ways. Jason Reitman has been rapidly preparing a spot at the table with his three features that take compelling, almost universal subjects, and dissect them with intelligence, humour, good plotting and smart populist cinema. Almost anyone living in the city or the suburbs in a first-world country, particularly the United States, today will have something to relate to in this film.
Never maudlin, quirky or sentimental (Juno strayed into this territory a number of times), Reitman has a very clear-headed picture about manners and self-respect in the digital age. Break-ups via blackberry, firings by subcontracting or Skype, underline how the dodge of responsibility and accountability has been accelerated by convenient technologies. The movie isn’t a plea for luddite living, but rather finding a way for humanity to overcome the shortcuts of technology. It is perhaps one of the few (and most timely) movies to come along on this subject. That Reitman can gracefully make this poignant and boisterously funny is why in Hollywood or in indie-land he is certainly going places.
This discussion currently has 17 responses.
December 4, 2009
Has anyone here seen Rocket Science? Worth it for Anna Kendrick, who is in Up in the Air. in the year everyone was unrightly up Ellen Page’s one-note ass, Kendrick was kicking ass and going unnoticed. Glad to see her get her due.
December 4, 2009
Kendrick is passable in Up in the Air (maybe even the weekest performance), I thought Vera Farmiga was incredible though (also awesome in a very different role in Scorsese’s THE DEPARTED). The actress who played Clooney’s sister was awesome.
And, trivia bit (while we are talking UP IN THE AIR actresses), the girl getting married to Danny McBride was the young star of HEAVENLY CREATURES, Melanie Lynskey along with Kate Winslet. Obviously Winslet has gone much further than her, but I’ve seen Lynskey pop up here and there lately and that is a good thing, even if she doesn’t have much to do in UP IN THE AIR…..She rocked as Damon’s wife in THE INFORMANT! and as the Mom who can’t get preganant in AWAY WE GO
December 4, 2009
…I guess Melanie Lynskey is a regular on Two and a Half Men as show that is apparently popular in the US, but I don’t watch that sort of stuff, maybe that show got her into features again because she’s been pretty busy the last couple years after that show got popular.
I’m rambling here though….
December 5, 2009
Got to wait till January for this in the UK. I’m usually going to be behind you guys unfortunately.
I’m looking forward to this one, although I’ve found Jason Reitman’s films often don’t quite live up to the hype or concept. Saying that I’ve only actually seen Juno and Thank You For Not Smoking, which were both good, but a little too light and fluffy to be great.
December 12, 2009
I’ll have more to comment when I get back to a computer instead of my phone, bu I just got out of this, and it was amazingly good. I was afraid the hype would get the better of it for me, but it was at least as good as I was hoping. Reitman has a rare ability to get out of the actors’ and script’s way, but still maintain an obvious control over everything. He’s not a flashy director, but every note the film hit was perfect – very classical Hollywood in the very best sense of the term.
December 24, 2009
Kendrick passable? I thought she held her own just fine alongside the others. I think she deserves every bit of awards love thrown her way. It was an honest and confident performance, but the confidence of her character acting cold and calculated only went so far, which I thought she did a great job of demonstrating during her breakdowns and rants, particularly her frustration with her personal life and not being taken seriously because of her age. She didn’t have the ability to light her backpack on fire. It wasn’t in her.
It was a great movie though and really resonated with me. Could be my favorite of the year, although I need to give Inglorious Basterds another watch first.
December 24, 2009
UITA’s female performances are some of the only ones that really truly stood out for me this year.
December 24, 2009
I completely disagree. I liked Farmiga in it a lot, but I thought Kendrick was pretty bad. Passable is maybe the better word… at best. The crying scene capped it ogff for me to realize she was not very good. She rushed her lines and didn’t seem to believable. I get that she’s high strung rookie with confidence, but it plays off as a performance by a girl who doesn’t really know much about acting.
December 24, 2009
I liked Kendrick. I found that as the film went on I liked her character more and more and felt more compassion for her. You have to give Kendrick at least a portion of the credit for that.
Fermiga was simply outstanding. She played a sexy, funny, tough and very sharp character and did it seemingly effortlessly.
The first 3/4 of the film was terrific. It just got stronger as it went on. I loved the whole section with the Corporate party they crashed. Even though I was fine with the turn the story took and where it ended up, I didn’t really like how they got there. It felt too familiar and almost cliche in spots during that last section (starting his speech and walking off, etc.). A solid film overall though.
December 24, 2009
That closing speech was a big downer on the movie as a whole. For as fun and unique as that movie was for the most part, I was surprised to see it go so cliché.
December 24, 2009
Melanie Lynskey! I’m so glad to hear she’s gradually becoming more prominent – I had no idea she was in this and The Informant! Loved her in Heavenly Creatures…
December 24, 2009
Wasn’t he leaving the speech meant to be cliché and expected by the audience, with the end result of his actions not?
December 24, 2009
I liked Kendrick to the extent that after she essentially leaves the film I find it goes way downhill, I really missed her on screen. Has anyone else seen her in Rocket Science? Same deal there. She kills, takes off, and the movie flounders until she’s back near the end.
December 24, 2009
Spoilers…
Jonathan, I felt the results of his actions ended up being cliche too. While he stood outside her house, I couldn’t help thinking “Please don’t let her already be married with kids, please don’t let her…Aw crap.” Not because I wanted it to work out for the characters (like I mentioned, I don’t mind where it ended up with Clooney’s character – it’s kind of fitting given everything else), but I had wished that they brought him there in another fashion.
I really do like Lynskey as well. She was the only bright spot in the otherwise dismal “Detroit Rock City” from many years ago.
December 25, 2009
There is a difference between predictability and cliche though. Cliche is something overused to the point of exhaustion and that plot development is certainly not overused, especially in the case of it being the woman who had the wife and family. It wasn’t meant to be a twist so much as it was meant to be an inevitability. Clooney’s development of rejecting his own philosophies had to be met with a stumbling block and from the very get-go we know it can’t end happily between these two. It was predictable because it was being alluded to all along.
December 26, 2009
True, but like I mentioned, I didn’t have a problem with things not ending happily between them. I didn’t mind Farmiga’s character rejecting him. I guess I would have preferred her rejecting him for other reasons that were based on Bingham himself – not because she hadn’t been truthful about her own life. But instead they went with “she was married all along and cheating on her spouse”. There was a bit of a role reversal there I suppose, but I still think the situation itself was both cliche and predictable. Wouldn’t it have been better for him to be hoisted by his own petard by getting rejected because of his philosophies? Not because she was cheating?
I don’t know, maybe not…Maybe I was just bummed because I suddenly didn’t like Farmiga’s character who had been so great up until then. I know it’s not about her, but still…
Add that to the walking out of his speech part and the learning of the suicide of the woman they had earlier fired and the ending didn’t work for me.
December 28, 2009
Just saw this yesterday and really enjoyed it. My Dad and I were also talking afterwards about Farmiga’s character’s inconsistencies, though – SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER if she really was the kind of person who wanted to have a specific kind of relationship with Clooney that wasn’t too emotionally complex, then she should have NEVER gone with him to the wedding or broke into his old school and all that.
She still did a great job in the part, though. And I really liked Kendrick’s character too.
When Clooney walked out of the speech, I actually was expecting him to go off on a whole other rant that explained the truths he learned and why they clashed with his previous philosophy. But instead he simply walked away, which I found somewhat surprising/underwhelming. But overall, despite its predictable bits, I was content with the ending.