About "Up in the Air"

WARNING: this post assumes that anyone reading it has seen Up in the Air. If you haven't and don't want to know what happens, stop reading now.

We just watched Up in the Air the other night, and I've been thinking ever since about the various reviews I read about this film. After its initial, positive response, there was a slew of commentary that damned it with faint praise, or outright complained that it was too slick, too neat, too perfect of a vehicle for George Clooney, etc.

(The most interesting complaint, to my mind, was the assertion that Jason Reitman condescended to the unemployed by hiring real, live, recently unemployed "ordinary folk" as well as actors to play some of the people who lose their jobs throughout the course of the movie. To be honest, I still have not made up my mind about that. On the one hand, isn't it a bit condescending to assume that those individuals didn't have the right to decide for themselves whether or not they were being exploited? On the other, in our five-minutes-of-fame obsessed society, how many people have the strength of will to refuse such an opportunity, especially since they could doubtless use the money? More to the point, however, is the fact that I don't think it actually added anything of note to my experience as a viewer.)

Setting that aside, I think all of the criticism that I have read missed the central thesis of the film, the issue that made me really love the movie: that what we do for a living matters, that it shapes (or misshapes) our soul. The journey that Ryan Bingham (Clooney's character) takes is a journey toward that discovery.

Consider: the movie opens and we see a happy man doing a terrible job with grace and ersatz compassion. He enjoys his life of disconnection. The movie seems to set up a traditional scenario, with Ryan as the good guy who needs to learn the value of love, positioned opposite the seemingly monstrous Natalie, played (to perfection) by Anna Kendrick. She is pushing for the efficient method of firing people remotely, via computer, and Ryan argues that the personal touch is critical in such a demeaning moment. We are set up to expect that Ryan will be vindicated and that Natalie will be humiliated and proven wrong. In a way, that happens - but it's utterly beside the point.

The point is that firing people is a horrible way to make a living. Natalie realizes that, and leaves in order to live a better life. Her epiphany is not driven by her idea to revolutionize the company's methods - her failure occurs in a face-to-face moment. It is also, not incidentally, Ryan's failure. But the movie doesn't dramatize either character paying a professional price for their failure to avoid tragedy; it is made very clear that their boss accepts their statements that they don't recall the woman in question at face value. Natalie quits voluntarily, and moves toward a career that will make her genuinely happy. When the movie ends, Ryan has won his battle and is returning to the life he so valued at the beginning, having lost all of the joy he previously took in his perceived freedom.

I haven't even mentioned the love story at the movie's center. It could work almost as well without it, but who would wish for this movie without Vera Farmiga's Alex? Clooney has never had an onscreen partner this strong - the closest was Jennifer Lopez, of all people, in Out of Sight, and how long ago was that? The romance, like the rest of the movie, is set up according to movie convention and then neatly turns that convention on its ear. We get the epiphany, we get the hero dashing through an airport and racing to proclaim his feelings at last - what we don't get is a happy ending. Instead, Ryan sees that he has given his heart (for the first time in his life) to a deceitful, dysfunctional human being. It was the right resolution, but no less excruciating for that.

The movie's ending is, I think, deliberately ambiguous. We know that Ryan has grown a little. He gives his precious frequent flyer miles to his recently married sister so that she and her husband can have their dream vacation after all. His misery in the final closeup is indicative of his new awareness - the question is, will he sink into misery or do something to change and redeem his life? Anyone who doubts Clooney's ability as an actor should take another look at that closeup; with no change in facial expression, I saw a man gazing into the depths of his soul and seeing only emptiness looking back.

I've gone on this long because I think this is a rare topic for an American film, and that is why it has gone unremarked. Some of us are lucky enough to find work that matters to us, that feeds our spirit; not everyone has that luxury. But there's a difference between working purely for sustenance, and doing something that is actively destructive. Active destruction hurts the person who commits it. It's a notion not many people discuss, but I consider it to be a central truth, and I was very glad to see a mainstream American movie with one of our biggest movie stars exploring it.

However, critical reception indicates that most people didn't pick up on that aspect of it at all.