K-SCORE: 77
Director: Jason Reitman
Based on: Up in the Air by Walter Kim
Starring: George Clooney, Anna Kendrick, Vera Farmiga, Jason Bateman
“depressing to its very core”
Spoiler level: Major
Ryan Bingham has a philosophy of moving about constantly, never feeling inclined to settle into a specific location with specific location. Up in the Air examines this philosophy, while simultaneously evaluating the lifestyle of one who flies constantly, accruing airline miles, and has the job of firing people on behalf of companies. It is a strong film in the sense that it does a much better job than most films of recreating reality, both in plot and character. Also, there is almost nothing happy about it. It’s depressing to its very core, probably ten to fifteen times more miserable than the filmmakers realize.
If you examine any one element of Ryan Bingham’s life, it comes across as either tragic or pathetic. His goal of accruing 10,000,000 airline miles is the closest to the most uplifting unique thing about him, and by his own admission, he doesn’t understand the purpose for such a goal. It’s not like the airline industry is tremendously enjoyable to pass through every day. He has a discussion with Natalie at one point about the time wasted of checking bags - why wouldn’t he discuss the time wasted of being transported through the sky?
“a failing business spending useful cash on an outside firm that fires its employees so they don’t have to”
Natalie is more heartwarming than other characters, and still representative of the bleakness of the world of Up in the Air. She has a lot of potential but winds up in this frustrating job of having to fire people because she follows her boyfriend to Omaha, only to have him leave her via text message. Then she quits when someone she fired kills herself. The only thing she has at the end of her time with the company is a few-sentence letter of recommendation that is wholly unimpressive in its construction. (I once read a letter of recommendation a teacher wrote for me after the fact and felt entirely the same thing. You can’t come up with something specific to say about my personality, skills, or work ethic?)
Vera Farmiga’s character Alex is so unethical in not telling Ryan about her family that it borders on evil. She cruelly uses him and pretends like their relationship is meaningless despite its obvious development, and then after the fact yells at him and calls him a parenthesis.
Ryan’s job is mean-spirited, and only exists because executives are too spineless to do their own firing. Even when he’s good at it, nothing can soften the blow of being fired at a company you’ve worked at a long time by a person you’ve never met who doesn’t even work there too. If anyone out there actually has this job or is an executive who would spend money on a such downsizing experts, I suggest you quit immediately. Fire yourself. Everyone would be better off.
On the side he’s a public speaker, giving the same bullshit speech to conferences everywhere. Ryan realizes the speech is bullshit as he realizes that he’s not developing meaningful connections with people in his life or achieving meaningful things, but the film merely shows him stopping in the middle of one, not redirecting his philosophy to a healthier place.
In the end, when asked where he’s from, Ryan has to say, “from here” - meaning, from the first class cabin of an American Airlines jet. Yikes. He leaves the film as he enters it, with very little of value in his world, the same job, the same trivial or lost relationships, only at the end, he’s far more aware of the depressing nature of his life. So there is character development, it’s just incredibly bleak.
Thematically, Up in the Air is quite minimalistic. There are loose connections to be made about being high in the sky in a plane and the way Bingham lives. Also the film has a bit to say about generations and technology. It says that younger generations are so reliant on instant trite communication via new computer tech that their interactions have become increasingly shallow. Older generations have either settled into lives they don’t like or didn’t want, or they’ve accepted that they’re not going to get many of the things they dreamed they’d have when they were younger.
I’ve watched this film twice now and I can’t find significant fault with it. Years ago I might have said that Alex deceiving Ryan so severely and treating him so poorly bordered on unrealistic, but now I’m jaded enough to think, yep, there are plenty of Alexes out there. Similarly, a failing business spending useful cash on an outside firm that fires its employees so they don’t have to would have seemed outrageous to a younger me. Now I’m jaded enough to think, yep, there are plenty of executives out there who’d make that kind of weak-willed unethical choice. So, Up in the Air is what is. The moments that made me laugh the first time didn’t the second time. There’s little development, the plot tends to ramble because there’s no precise central conflict (plenty of conflict though), and it’s occasionally a celebration of the airline industry, which is never a good thing. The airlines need to be publicly shamed by films. Mostly Up in the Air functions though, just don’t be fooled by its bright lighting and quiet tone into thinking it’s something other than a depressing narrative.