*This is a guest post from Kate Staiger.
The film begins by examining an employee’s reaction as he is fired by Ryan Bingham. Bingham guides a tragic moment into a hopeful possibility with a speech he uses on many of his subjects. He is good at his job, but no matter how good he is, it doesn’t take away from the desperation of unemployment. The movie’s plot could begin and end with this theme; an exploration of what it’s like to have the job as corporate assassin, but it doesn’t. The experience of firing and being fired takes the backdrop, while other plot lines emerge and take the movie through a series of love-twists and moral-turns.
Early on in the movie, Bingham is joined on the road by his new, pesky associate, Natalie (Anna Kendrick). Natalie possesses all the qualities of a young, overly-confident college grad. Her character is not a part of Kirn’s novel, though appears in the movie as a sort of moral compass for Bingham (the novel offers disease as Bingham’s wake-up call). Natalie challenges all of his life-decisions with her know-it-all youthfulness. Their contrast of philosophy, hers being more traditional, his being non-committal, is occasionally interesting. But most of the time, she just comes off as a stompy-teenagery type that adds drama instead of story.
Bingham’s other female sidekick is Alex (Vera Farmiga), a sexy, strong-corporate-woman. She meets Bingham, a fellow super-traveler, in a hotel bar. They hit it off, do the deed, and she becomes the love interest. They exchange contacts and meet for booty calls in cities where they happen to cross paths while on business. As their relationship progresses, he goes through the formal “sworn-bachelor-stumbles-into-love” process, schlepping it all with sentimentality and making it confusing to understand the direction of this movie. Aren’t I supposed to be watching a movie about the tragedies of people losing their jobs? Or am I supposed to be focused on Ryan Bingham’s thawing heart? Or no, it’s this: Ryan Bingham has a hard job and travels a lot. It makes his life experience void of human connections. He is now in the process of making it better as a result of his pesky sidekick on one shoulder, and his hot woman-equivalent on the other. YES!
This movie is fun to watch. The typical Clooney exploits are there; dashing smiles, good hair and clothes, favorable lighting, and witty bantering all carry him through the movie. Oh! And the very funny Jason Bateman plays the ruthless boss. AND the movie passes 2/3 of the Bechdel Test; it’s just that the women leads’ conversations with one another happen to be about their ideal man. Damn. The idea for the movie is appealing, the dialogue, at times, is smart and funny. The movie runs its course through predictability and wraps up with an ironic ending (which is actually good), but “Best Picture” at the Oscars? I’d be surprised…or wouldn’t I?
Kate Staiger lives in Cincinnati. Her current interests include: free-internet programs, fixing her toilet all by herself, and the band A Hawk and A Hacksaw.
I finally saw Up in the Air, and I basically agree with your assessment. My dominant feeling at its conclusion was puzzlement: What was this movie about, and what was I supposed to think of its characters?
Though Natalie did have her stompy-college-grad moments, she is my favorite character–one I genuinely like. She is smart and eager, and good at her job. Flying people all over the country to fire other people is a nutty business model.(More on this later.) Natalie was also bracingly honest. Instead of wallowing in self-pity after being dumped by her good-on-paper boyfriend, she describes the relationship not as one of mutual love, but as something she “could’ve made to work.” She then proceeds to go out and have a good time. She’s confident, smart, and we agree with most of her decisions.
Alex. Oh, Alex. What are we supposed to think of you? While Ryan seems to have lived true to his no-commitments philosophy, Alex hypocritically spouts it while being married with kids. I like her personality, and want to like her, but the movie makes her into the villain who breaks Ryan’s newly-fragile heart when he falls for her. She doesn’t compromise her desires, which is rare for a female character in film, so I suppose that’s something. Ultimately, she’s another tool (as is Natalie) in Ryan Bingham’s too-late-in-life education.
Finally, Ryan. Is he supposed to be the hero or the anti-hero? I’m going with anti-hero, and I think that’s what we’re supposed to take away from the movie, but it does a shitty job of conveying that. His victory–convincing the company that firing people in person is ethically superior to firing them via video-conference–saves his job–or, rather, his preferred way of doing the job. Yay for him? He takes some photos for his bumpkin family (and here is a huge problem with the film: we’re clearly not supposed to identify with his lower-middle class siblings, but we are supposed to see them as part of the Real America that we patronizingly hold up as examples for our (?) empty, shiny, corporate lives) and realizes he’s not that important to their lives. But then he saves the (wedding) day. Hero. Perhaps Clooney is too dashing and likable for the role; he never comes across as shallow and slimy–but he is. In the end, I can’t tell if he’s taken Natalie’s advice and used his miles to travel to a random destination chosen at whim, or if he’s returned to his comfortable corporate lifestyle.
Oops–I forgot about the other character: the group of mostly real-life unemployed people. Actually, they’re not characters, but tools used to create a serious mood, and to make the film seem more important–and about more–than it actually is. The treatment of the unemployed is the most offensive element of Up in the Air; it pretends to be about them, but isn’t–in any way.
And, my GAWD, the product placement. I don’t see any irony in Hilton, American Airlines, and Hertz being so prominently displayed. They’re always shown in a positive light. A car never breaks down, there’s never an annoying talker/snorer on the plane, the hotel halls are never noisy. “Become a preferred Hilton guest and you too will get to lasso a naked sexy lady with your necktie!” The key here, of course, is the elite status. If this isn’t an advertisement for the superiority of the corporate experience, I don’t know what is. Ans so goes the film.
Kate writes: “Aren’t I supposed to be watching a movie about the tragedies of people losing their jobs?…This movie is fun to watch. The typical Clooney exploits are there; dashing smiles, good hair and clothes, favorable lighting, and witty bantering all carry him through the movie.”
Amber writes: “Perhaps Clooney is too dashing and likable for the role; he never comes across as shallow and slimy–but he is. In the end, I can’t tell if he’s taken Natalie’s advice and used his miles to travel to a random destination chosen at whim, or if he’s returned to his comfortable corporate lifestyle….If this isn’t an advertisement for the superiority of the corporate experience, I don’t know what is. And so goes the film.”
Yes, yes, and yes. The problem with this film is its too enjoyable to watch, i.e. Clooney is too charming of a character, a la Cary Grant. The same problem infects Oliver Stone’s Wall Street – Gordon Gecko is too cool! How can we criticize the economic system he personifies when it’s so damned cool and convincing? I did not believe for an instant that Clooney’s character was or should be experiencing an existential crisis. He seemed to have it all figured out. In fact, the root of his crisis is not that his life is empty and meaningless, it’s that the business model he embodies threatens to change, to become even more aloof, virtual, and “up in the air” than the current jet-setting model (one that is already inhuman enough – outsourcing terminating employees?! Corporations are heartless bastards!). So his real problem is that the economic system is shifting from hyper-capitalism to hyper-hyper capitalism, and he will become as irrelevant as those that he so gently and warmly lets go. Better find the right one, settle down, and retire on that big fat nest-egg (watch the deleted scene of him decking out a phat ass studio apartment to drive home this point).
What all this amounts to is that the film wants it both ways, and therefore lacks a moral center. It pays lip service to family being important, while depicting family as a source of slavery. It nostalgically argues that there’s an older capitalistic way of doing business that is ethical and more human than the completely virtualized model on the horizon, which is somehow of a different beast and completely evil (didn’t the previous model push that fired worker off the bridge?). It at once depicts our hero as a wise, zen master who has embraced his nothingness and a immature and inauthentic fool who really needs to hang out with the proles more often to reconnect with the “real things” in life (although the grounded proles prove to be even bigger buffoons than the jet-setters). You can’t have it both ways.
“Which side are you on Reitman? Which side are you on?”
I just saw this film as so unbearably dark. I watched it by myself, and I left the theater feeling horrible. Enjoyable to watch? Did we see the same film?
To be honest, I’m really not picking up on the criticisms that it celebrates the corporate experience or that it somehow lacks a moral center.
Everything, from the laid-off woman who jumped off a bridge, to Kendrick’s self-disgust, to Clooney’s self-disgust (giving away his flier miles, giving up the backpack speeches), to Farmiga’s pathetic attempt to reinvigorate her own life, to the final scene with Clooney staring up at the flights, going back to what he finally realized to be nothing but a soul-sucking life, void of human connection …
This was a total tragedy.