Up in the Air (2009)

Up in the Air, one of ten nominees for Best Picture of 2009, is a melancholy little masterpiece of a film. It's a remarkably skilled movie about the economic conditions of our times, yet it also is an engrossing study of the consequences of choosing to be isolated from your fellow human beings. I found it to be a brilliant, insightful examination of how one man attempts to find a sense of meaning in a world that seemingly has little to offer him other than a chance to escape the mundane details of the day-to-day existence that most of us have to endure.

George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, who has the unenviable job of being one of the most successful members of a corporation whose job it is to fire people in large numbers. Bingham flies from city to city--we are always told on the screen which city he's in at the moment--dispensing bad news. He's actually, in an odd way, very successful and talented at his work. He manages to defuse some very difficult situations with employees who are, unsurprisingly, upset at learning that they will be unemployed. Bingham always seems to know just how to let people know what they need to be feeling or doing at particularly tense times.

He's also managed to rid himself of almost any sense of a personal existence. He has a tiny room that he rents, but he never sleeps there if he can avoid it. He's always in a hotel or on a plane or in some company's headquarters because of his job. And he loves it that way. He's managed to amass a huge number of frequent flyer miles, and he has set as a goal for himself the attainment of a magical number: ten million. If he reaches that goal, he will only be the seventh person in American Airlines history to do so, and he will receive some remarkable perks, including having his name on the side of an airplane.

You can't really be good at this type of job or manage to spend so much time away from home unless you've severed almost all personal connections, and Ryan has been especially good at that as well. He rarely talks to or sees members of his family. His younger sister is getting married, and he's reluctant to join in this little game she and her fiance have devised of having people taking pictures of a cardboard cutout of the two of them in "exotic" places throughout the country. Instead, he's busy giving motivational speeches about what we all pack into our backpacks. You see, he's trying to convince other people that we should travel through life much lighter than we do. We are, he seems to suggest, too bogged down by all of our commitments, particularly those links (it seems) to other people.

Into his life steps Alex (played by the enchanting Vera Farmigia). They meet at a bar, and it isn't long before they are comparing all of the cards for which they receive travel benefits. They have sex that night and even schedule their next encounter based upon where they will be traveling. They make for a charming couple together, and they seem to share many of the same ideas about life. She describes herself as a female version of him--well, those aren't her exact words, but it's the gist of what she says. He even invites her to join him for his sister's wedding, and they have a lot of fun walking around his old school.

Of course, while this budding romance is underway, Ryan's company decides that it is going to shift to a new form of business. Thanks to an idea by a young woman named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), the company plans to begin firing people over the Internet, making a dehumanizing process even more remote and distant. Ryan successfully lobbies his boss (Jason Bateman) to have one last chance to prove that his methods are more successful than what Natalie has proposed, but his boss surprises him by having Natalie tag along as Ryan goes to several different companies to fire workers. Needless to say, Natalie is unprepared for what she encounters on the road, and the film clearly suggests that technology cannot replace the human element in an unpleasant business like the one these two are engaged in.

I like Kendrick as an actress. She was one of the best things about the charming little movie Camp a few years ago; I'll never listen to Stephen Sondheim's "The Ladies Who Lunch" the same way after her performance in that film. However, as good as she is, her character here is too narrowly written. When the most sophisticated way you have to show her adapting to a new situation is allowing her to take her hair out of its permanent ponytail, then you know you've got some work to do to flesh out the character more. Still, I can appreciate how hard Kendrick works to make a seemingly unsympathetic character into someone we actually want to see succeed.

Farmigia has played supporting parts in big movies for years, and she seems to be just on the cusp of breakout stardom. I thought she was terribly underused in The Departed a couple of years ago, but she has much more of an opportunity in Up in the Air to make an impression. She's warm and funny here, especially in the discussion she has with Natalie about how women's priorities have changed over the years. It's a knowing discussion between a more experienced and knowledgeable woman and a more naive, if intelligent young woman, and Farmigia makes it work. You can instantly see why Ryan would be so attracted to her that he would consider giving up his life on the road for someone like Alex.

Clooney has never been better than he is in this film. He allows us to see just how isolated Ryan has become and how much he seems to enjoy that sense of isolation. He makes all of the surface moves of being a part of society, but you get the feeling that he'd really rather be alone. He admits to avoiding emotional attachments, and even his phone calls and conversations with his sister reveal that he cannot make himself confront the pain that human connections sometimes bring. It's a gutsy move for someone as charming and handsome as Clooney to take on a part like this. It would be very easy to dislike Ryan Bingham because he seems like such a narcissist, yet when he takes the first steps to let Alex into his life, you also sense that he really does have the capacity to love someone else. He's just never felt comfortable about doing so.

I would like to mention how seamlessly the film's creators have incorporated actual people who have been fired from their jobs into the narrative. Yes, there are actors like the great J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis who have more extended roles as workers being laid off, but the most emotional ones (for me, at least) are played by non-professionals. They bring a true sense of just how devastating such a change in one's life can be. You empathize with them because they are so open and honest about how much they've come to love or enjoy their jobs, and they just have no sense of how to carry on with their lives. More than even a television news report or newspaper article could do, Up in the Air captures in those moments that sense of loss so many people in this country are feeling now.

Much has and will be made of the ending and its ambiguity. And much will probably be made about the treatment of the female characters in the film, especially since there is a discussion about the different generations of feminists and feminism. However, at its heart, Up in the Air isn't about happy endings or the lack of them, and it certainly isn't about--not really--relationships between men and women. It's about a type of individual who has chosen for most of his life to concentrate upon his work and not his personal relationships, to spend much of his time away from close human contact so that he can avoid being hurt the way that he has to hurt other people thanks to his job. It's unsettling to watch parts of this film, but it's one of the most brilliant character analyses I've seen in years.