Up in the Air (2009)

Directed by: Jason Reitman
Starring: George Clooney

***

It seems as though once a year there is a movie earning great reviews that doesn't have a trailer to suggest anything all that great. My experience with movies like this is that the trailer better represents the film than do the reviews. Up in the Air is no exception. Its fast paced and witty but it lacks depth. It surrounds charming people who are good at what they do and love it but the conflicts aren't real or believable. What's worse is that the characters themselves feel wrong and their relationships are forced. Not forced like Ryan Bingham's (Clooney) relationships with his family he never sees, forced like the movie doesn't let us learn enough about him to warrant a good or a bad relationship with a complete stranger. What stands in the way of this movie, which entertains and can claim itself to be easily watchable, is the fact that he who we follow for nearly two hours pretty much does the same thing the whole time.

Bingham works for a company that lends its employees out to other companies to fire people. As a result of doing this type of work, Bingham spends all but a month or two of the year traveling, and he loves it. We're set up to believe that maybe Bingham only says he loves how his life works because he doesn't know anything different. By spending so my time alone (or surrounded, depending on who you talk to) its impossible for him to have any real relationships. I say this without any certainty however which turned out to be a lingering issue throughout the film. The themes of the film were consistent, but any opportunity to interpret them was lost thanks to a subtlety that didn't really work. There are so many instances, about which I won't go into detail to avoid spoilers, that should not have been up for interpretation but were and by trying to find the correct or even appropriate interpretation of them, I was left without closure.

The two major relationships in this film are Bingham's with Alex (Vera Farminga) and his with Natalie (Anna Kendrick) Ryan and Alex have everything in common and the sexual tension between the two of them only brings them closer. Their relationship exists at first only when they land in the same city. Clooney and Farminga are very compatible and play off each other extremely well. Their good looks and charm add to the enjoyment of watching them together but one aspect of their relationship just never rang true. Ryan and Natalie are complete opposites, not only in the way they work but in the way they look at life. Natalie has always seen herself settling down with a family while Ryan wants nothing of the sort. The only reason Natalie works for the same company as Ryan (a company where she's made her mark by essentially eliminating Ryan's job by doing it via internet conferencing) is because she followed her boyfriend to Omaha, Nebraska. Natalie's criticism of Ryan's relationship with Alex does eventually have an effect on him and forces him to reassess.

Here in lies to problem. Ryan's outlook on life, at least the outlook he reveals to Natalie is that he's content being alone. That he doesn't want or need a girlfriend, or a wife or kids. That he is married to his job because he's good at it and he likes it. Normally there's nothing wrong with that, but Ryan's charm and compatibility with people in general is hardly consistent with someone who spends so much of his time alone and that his only real interactions with other human beings comes when he's firing them. Its inconsistent with that type of character that he'd so easily charm Alex right into his hotel room. And if we do believe that Ryan is just good with people, why should we believe Alex is the first woman he has a city to city relationship with, after all, he seems to have had plenty of practice. He charms her by talking about how big his thing is... (thing being the number of miles he flies a year).

What does work about this film is how it avoids cliche relationships with the smaller conflicts presented throughout. When Natalie's boyfriend breaks up with her via text message, she falls into a uncontrollable crying fit in the hotel lobby. Ryan is forced to console her, something he's not apt to doing even after firing people. And in the midst of his cool demeanor, he's still not above taking photos of a cutout of his sister and her fiance in front of national attractions for their wedding. (The wedding scene was about 20 minutes of the movie I could have easily done without.) The humorous moments and those simple conflicts give this movie some life that the it lacks as a whole. We learn so little about Ryan throughout the film, that without any closure, we can't even speculate on where he might go next. A movie doesn't need to have an ending to end, but if there is nothing to cling to at the end, people will leave the theater without really thinking about the movie at all.

I mentioned that this movie is easily watchable. Like other Reitman films, Thank You for Smoking and Juno, the pacing, the characters and the story make for a fun watch. This movie is better than just that though. Despite all the negative things I had to say about it, on the surface there is actually a pretty good movie. Its the lack of depth that keeps it from being great. What Reitman does so well is take very serious themes and make a pretty light movie out of them. Beyond the relationships that are the center of the film is what Ryan does that puts him in the position to have these relationships. He's traveling so much because he goes all around the country and fires people. Littered throughout the film are confessionals of those he's fired and how people react. Ryan explains to Natalie that they are dealing with people at the most fragile moment in their life. They are sending them into the unknown and that's the scariest place for anyone. We feel bad for these people but we are comforted when Ryan is there because we know he knows exactly what to say or do in any situation. He doesn't make it easier for the people he's firing, but he doesn't try. He tells it how it is. I wish the film could have done more of this. I wish that instead of being so subtle, it was more in my face. Even still, Up in the Air is an above average movie, if not a good one. Kind of like the trailer.