Reeling: “Up in the Air”
Posted on 07. Jan, 2010 by Jef in Film, Reeling
George Clooney and Vera Farmiga as frequent flyers in "Up in the Air"
If three times equals a trend, “Up in the Air” is where we can start making sense of director Jason Reitman. His previous two films, “Thank You for Smoking” and “Juno”, were both well-received but markedly different. Reitman brought a similar off-beat timing to each project, but one was about a man balancing a reprehensible job with trying to raise his kid, and the other was a twee-fest of pop culture references surrounding a girl’s not-ironic abortion dilemma. What’s your deal, Reitman?
The lead character in “Up in the Air”, George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, definitely has a lot in common with the protagonist in “Thank You for Smoking”. While not exactly a spin doctor for the tobacco industry, Ryan’s job is nonetheless daunting and easy to hate: he’s contracted to fire people. Reitman highlights the difficulty of Ryan’s job by using footage of real people who were recently laid off, re-enacting their reactions to the bad news. The seriousness of this footage is jarring, drawing a distracting line between the haha-acting of the actors and the real world problems of those who faced the brunt of the economic downturn. But it works: Ryan’s job sucks.
Or does it? If you ask Ryan, it’s the best gig in the world. He gets to fly around the country for more that 300 days a year, he’s never tied to one place or one person, and the only tangible goal in his life is racking up enough miles to join a prestigious club of travelers who enjoy ridiculous perks. He even meets the perfect partner-in-crime, the fantastic Vera Farmiga as the sexually-ambiguously named Alex. “Imagine me as you,” she says, assuring Ryan she’s down with casual sex. “But with a vagina.”
Ryan is a little too smooth to latch on to for audience identification, but his case is strong: what’s wrong with how he lives? It’s a case he makes well in his side hustle as a motivational speaker, where he urges people to empty their metaphorical backpacks and live free of life’s sentimental baggage. This gets complicated when Ryan falls for Alex, of course, but also after he meets Natalie (Anna Kendrick, in a nice departure from her role in the “Twilight” series), an ambitious but naive new-hire at his company who proposes Ryan and his colleagues save money on flying and instead fire people from their home base, via video conferencing, because, you know, the recession and all.
It’s a nice moral-juggle from Reitman, who made Aaron Echkart in “Thank You for Smoking” more likable than other directors would have, and also shifted audience expectations of which side characters to hate halfway through “Juno”. Here, it’s lone wolf Ryan who teaches Natalie that firing people requires at least the respect of a face-to-face encounter, if not a little bit of genuine compassion as well. On her end, dealing with a recent break-up, Natalie convinces Ryan that Alex is worth the price of a fully emotional relationship, but Reitman complicates the ease of Natalie’s lesson with an untypical (for Hollywood) conclusion.
But it’s not that Reitman eschews a pat Hollywood ending; it’s that he chooses not to pass judgement on his characters. It wouldn’t be correct to say that all three characters in “Up in the Air” are wrong in the end, but more like Reitman doesn’t seem to care. His understanding is seen in how Eckhart’s horrible occupation in “Thank You for Smoking” becomes secondary, inconsequential even, to his development as a person and father. Similarly, in “Juno”, Ellen Page dodges both the typical moral conundrums of abortion and the ironic self-regard of hipster films, and instead Reitman shifts the film to being about growing up and learning to make hard decisions.
If there’s a clear line through Reitman’s films so far, it’s self-sufficiency. It’s appropriate that the only Reitman character without at least a frame of redeeming screen time is the anti-abortion activist in “Juno”. If his films have any politics at all, it’s that: pro-choice, live your life, just don’t hurt people in the process or tell them what to do. Reitman’s films leave the indictments up to the audience, and that’s what makes them both light in feeling, but heavy in how they spark conversations and stick around in your thoughts.
The way Clooney, Farmiga and Kendrick handle Reitman’s qualities is the best acting and chemistry we’ve seen yet in his films (even though “Up in the Air” suffers from some weak diversions — but that’s me nitpicking). It will be interesting to see what kind of story he tackles next, but one thing is likely — it will follow incredibly nuanced characters through hard life decisions, but despite Reitman displaying them raw, you’ll never get them under your thumb. “Up in the Air”, if anything, is well-titled.
Simon
Jan 8th, 2010
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, like you because of the melancholy ending, not despite it as some critics have suggested. Clooney’s character works exceptionally well because of the meta referential context, something that I’ve read might actually end up hurting him during the Oscar race. That’d be a shame since I think it takes balls to play a Hollywood role that might hit too close to home.
Regardless, I would say this movie was at its best when it made me laugh, and totally co-sign on the use of real laid of workers playing laid off workers — that gave those scenes (which might have come off patronizing if overdone) a poignant dose of humanity.
Also, I actually thought ‘Thank You For Smoking’ was kind of stupid towards the end, but that’s just me.
Jef
Jan 9th, 2010
You know what, the Bingham = Clooney thing never even occurred to me, and now I feel kind of dumb for missing it. I think though if someone’s gonna fault him for that in this case, they’d have to throw out most of his career as well. He’s always pretty much being his smooth self, the plot around that in this case actually mirroring his life really doesn’t lessen or elevate the performance for me.
What about the “Thank You for Smoking” ending got to you?