Up in the Air [DVD]

--Crew--

Jason Reitman...Director

--Cast--

George Clooney as Ryan Bingham

Vera Farminga as Alex Goran

Anna Kendrick as Natalie Kenner

Jason Bateman as Craig Gregory

--Review--
Ryan Bingham's [George Clooney] job is to fire people he doesn't work with. He's brought into various companies to fire their employees and to absolve managers of their own responsibility in firing an employee. The concept is unique and allows Bingham an emotional distance from the people he fires. It doesn't effect Bingham because he doesn't know them. At least that's the premise.

Eventually Bingham runs into Alex Goran [Vera Farminga] at a hotel bar. The two connect on a level and begin a relationship. It's a complex, risk-less relationship. Just the way both parties like it. Both are working for giant near anonymous corporations that forces the pair to travel throughout the nation. The vast distance between them are both emotional and physical.

Bingham's world is turned upside down when the new hire at his company, Natalie Keener [Anna Kendrick] proposes a shift from personal firings to firings done over the web. It would be more cost effective not to fly employees across the nation to fire. The reasoning by Keener is highly logical and near emotionless. Keener's proposal goes into conflict with Bingham who finds the web firings cold and impersonal. Not to mention Bingham's entire career will take a dynamic shift from personal communication to an impersonal digital one. Firing someone isn't about simply letting them go. To Bingham there's a logic to firing someone in person, it's personal, it's comforting and more than anything-human.

We come to find Bingham and Keener traveling the country firing people together. Keener begins to realize the emotional involvement in firing an individual. Bingham slowly becomes a mentor and even a father figure to Keener.

There's a lot happening in "Up in the Air." The film looks at age, relationships and the meaning of goals. Is it enough to want something? What do people fall back on where there's a crisis? After all the miles traveled by our characters, it's not about the distance that makes them better people, it's their relationships. Their involvement and appreciation of others is the key to understanding the film.

At one of Bingham's presentation on the meaning of baggage, Bingham equates that relationships are the great burden of our lives. It's the weight of relationships that will force the shoulder straps of a back pack into our bodies. It's those binding relationships that tie you down, that may even harm you. Bingham is correct in a way. Relationships are perilous adventures but they can also be highly rewarding. The film wonders about our sense of isolation and our sense of acceptance. How do we fit into a world that seem to eclipse us and not accompany us?

There is a scene in "Up in the Air" that appears to have Bingham conversing with a near ethereal father figure. It could be God, or it could just be a missing paternal figure not present in his life. When Bingham is able to finally converse with this man, Bingham is at a lost for words. It's as if he's finally reaching adulthood and looking back at the various aspects of his life. There's a lot that has happened to him. There's just too much to talk about. Bingham's highly engaging speeches on the dangers of relationships and baggage are displaced. He's changed and in his altered state he begins to understand a new way of existence. What he use to think isn't what he thinks now.

"Up in the Air" is so charming and delightful it's hard not to recommend the film to everyone. The film deals with age, romance and the obscure thoughts that transcend all the hours of the day. It's about our expectations and the idle thoughts that goes with them. Can we overcome our fears and emotional tremors, our elite fragile egos? "Up in the Air" believes that together we might be able to and I do too.