It’s all “Up in the Air,” really

I really wanted to love “Up in the Air” starring George Clooney and directed by Jason Reitman. I had pretty high expectations and wanted the movie to be great. I guess I was hoping it would be one of those rare occasions when Clooney veers away from the comfortable, status quo characters he usually plays, and does something different.

I’m thinking of “O Brother Where Art Thou” as an example of what he’s capable of when he breaks the mold.

I don’t know why I thought that was a realistic possibility, since everything I had heard about UITA made it sound like his character was as close to the real Clooney as possible.

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man who travels and works constantly, is smooth and successful, slick and well-dressed and has no visible attachments. He even delivers motivational speeches under the title “What’s in Your Backpack?” which extol the virtues of living an unencumbered lifestyle.

In this film, as pretty much everyone knows by now since the hype has been huge (nominated for Best Picture etc.), Clooney plays a professional downsizer. His company is hired out by other companies to swoop in and deliver bad news to employees while making it sound as much like good news as possible.

"Anyone who has ever built an empire or changed the world has sat exactly where you are sitting" is one of his favourite lines for the newly-unemployed.



While he realizes that his work is pretty low on the moral register, he strives to infuse it with as much dignity and respect as possible. He seems to truly care about the people he is firing and wants to help them deal with it – at least for the 15 minutes he is sitting across from them.

After that, he’ll never see them again and is seems clear he rarely gives them a second thought after they walk out the door.

When a young over-achieving upstart, appropriately named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) joins his company and tries to do away with the road-warriors like Clooney, replacing them with call-centre style webcam downsizers, Clooney is forced to demonstrate the value of his work.

He takes her on the road and shows her why people deserve to be fired in person.

I was disappointed with this movie. While I liked the way the film was shot, with an interesting mix of documentary-style footage of people reacting to being fired and interesting airplane and airport scenes, overall it was pretty underwhelming.

While Kendrick is convincing most of the time (nominated for best supporting actress) there’s one terrible scene where she starts crying in a hotel lobby, waving her hands around in the air in a really unconvincing way. It’s pretty ridiculous.

Also, neither Katie nor I sensed the chemistry that was supposed to exist between Clooney and a fellow road-warrior (Alex, played by Vera Farmiga who also got a best supporting actress nom) whom he meets in a hotel bar, and continues to rendezvous with in meet-ups around the country.

She tells him she’s a female version of himself, and makes it clear there are no strings attached.

Seems like a good idea at the time, but this relationship ends up serving as a metaphor for Bingham’s life and the emptiness he has filled it with. In fact, what helped salvage the story for us, was the way this relationship plays out and the eventual realization that everything Bingham loves and values in his life, means nothing.

While most of the film glamourized his lifestyle, the final scenes reveal where his choices have taken him and what all those Air Miles really add up to in the end.