THE STORY – The story of a traveling corporate downsizer who is forced to reckon with the consequences of his job and his lifestyle when two women upend his isolated, constantly moving existence.
THE CAST – George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Amy Morton, Jason Bateman, Melanie Lynskey, J.K. Simmons, Sam Elliott, Danny McBride & Zach Galifianakis
THE TEAM – Jason Reitman (Director/Writer) & Sheldon Turner (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 109 Minutes
The job market is in shambles, companies are using faceless consultants to prune their workforce, and layoffs are being conducted over video chat. If you didn’t know any better, you would assume that “Up in the Air” took place in the 2020s. But no, the Jason Reitman drama is sixteen years old, and has proved almost as relevant, poignant, and funny today as it was in 2009.
“Up in the Air” drops the viewer into 2009, the height of the housing market-induced recession. Jobs are hard to come by. Firings are happening right and left. But Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has a job. A job that he is perfect for. It just so happens that the job in question is coming in to fire employees, so their actual employers don’t have to. The very existence of Bingham’s job is a sign of an increasingly impersonal world. But an impersonal job in an impersonal world happens to be perfect for Bingham. He is cold, corporate efficiency manifest. Airports and hotel rooms are far more familiar to him than his own home. He’s in his mid-40s with no spouse and no kids. But in this job, this constant moving and this inability to connect with others is a strength. Indeed, it is the only way that someone doing Bingham’s job could maintain their sanity. The film’s unsubtle tagline, “the story of a man waiting to make a connection,” spells it out.
That connection comes in two forms, both of which rattle Bingham’s neat, connection-free life. The first through, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a new employee at Bingham’s company, is tasked with shadowing him to learn the ropes of mass firing people as their company transitions to a new program involving firing people over video chat. She’s young and earnest, providing Bingham with a rare opportunity to remember that people other than himself exist, as well as an opportunity to consider what the job he is doing does to the soul of a person who commits to it. The other comes through Alex (Vera Farmiga), a fellow constant traveller, who provides Bingham with a glimpse of another life. In this life, Bingham could have relationships, even family, that Bingham had never considered.
In their own ways, both of these women chisel cracks in the walls Bingham carefully erected to protect himself during his blissful, emotion-free life. Once those cracks are formed, and Bingham’s humanity is awakened, he is forced to confront what it means to be a human being while performing the most inhumane job imaginable.
The best Jason Reitman movies lure the viewer in with the promise of comedy and then clobber them with a haymaker of surprise emotion. The ability to force the viewer to reckon with such a wide range of emotions in the span of a few hours is what ensured that “Juno,” for example, ended up as an Oscar winner. But none of Reitman’s films chart this journey from crowd-pleasing comedy to raw emotion as surprisingly and heartbreakingly as “Up in the Air.”
One could be forgiven, after watching the first act of “Up in the Air,” for thinking of the film as a full-on comedy. Reitman brings the same whip-crack editing and voiceover found in his very funny “Thank You for Smoking” to plunge the viewer into Bingham’s life on the road. Bingham’s observations about traveling and airport efficiency earn knowing chuckles from anyone who has traveled extensively, as do cutaways involving disgruntled employees with cameos from the likes of Zack Galifianakis. Like “Thank You for Smoking,” “Up in the Air” recognizes that the corporate world has created jobs that can only be inhabited by a specific kind of person who is charismatic and emotion-free enough to survive them. In 2006, Reitman found the existence of such jobs simply funny. But by 2009, corporate greed and soullessness had driven the world into a recession. Suddenly, the fact that such a job exists and that such people who could thrive in such a job aren’t funny. It’s tragic.
Once Bingham meets Natalie and Alex, the pacing slows down—the rapid-fire editing shifts to something more deliberate. Scenes are allowed to breathe more. And so does Bingham, as he finds himself less focused on traveling, more willing to savor time with the people in his life. Scenes involving firing are no longer played for laughs, even in a vague manner. The viewer is treated to the sight of pathetic middle aged men experiencing body wracking sobs, which are at times as excruciating to watch as a scene of violence.
It’s hard to think of a more perfect actor to stand as the focal point of this film than George Clooney. Clooney already proved in “Michael Clayton” that he has the charisma and obvious competence to play the kind of person who carries out jobs that are too unpleasant for even the most unethical of companies to do themselves. More importantly, he ensures the viewer wants to root for him even when he is engaged in the most unscrupulous of jobs. But if “Michael Clayton” ends at the start of such a character’s journey to fully feeling human, “Up in the Air” takes it a step further to really understand what happens to such a person when they are forced to become human. It’s less flashy than Clooney’s work in “The Descendants” two years later, but it’s every bit as heartbreaking.
Of course, one only buys Ryan Bingham becoming human if the external forces that inflict humanity on him are similarly believable. Fortunately, Farmiga and Kendrick are more than up for the task. The rare example of a screenplay that unquestionably improves upon its source material, Natalie and Alex were dreamed up entirely for the film. They inhabit almost polar opposite states of being: Natalie’s warmth and earnestness, Alex’s alluring cynicism. They pull Bingham in opposite directions, but in each direction, out of his shell. Farmiga’s performance is more assured. She’s entirely believable as the kind of person who could make Bingham reconsider his unwillingness to engage in romantic relationships. She also plays a third-act reveal that showcases previously unknown layers to her character to devastating effect. Kendrick’s strengths lie more in the writing. She has one or two “big” emotional moments that don’t feel quite as convincing, but she plays her day-to-day moments with Clooney well. The character functions as a useful foil to Clooney’s Bingham. If Bingham entered his job as something less than human from day one, Natalie has a good heart and makes the corrosive impact of their job on the soul of anyone who partakes in it apparent to both the viewer and, more importantly, to Bingham.
If there is any storytelling flaw, it is that Natalie’s arc is entirely predictable. From the start, it’s clear that someone as genuinely goodhearted as her can’t survive the kind of world Bingham inhabits and thrives in. At the same time, Bingham’s learning to become Natalie’s mentor leads to some of the film’s funniest moments, such as his massacring of Natalie’s inefficient luggage choices, and a “Wedding Crashers” style crashing of a random office party. It also leads to some of the film’s most emotional scenes, such as Natalie’s first solo firing.
Bingham’s relationship with Alex is less predictable. Reitman and co-writer Sheldon Turner go so far as to lure the viewer into thinking that a classic rom-com beat is about to happen in the third act: a race across the airport to make a flight and declare one’s love. But then they pull the rug out. The effect is devastating. This whiplash of emotions is what makes the film hit so hard. It’s hilarious, it’s heartbreaking, it’s cynical, it’s depressing. The viewer can never fully get at ease, leaving them vulnerable to gut punches.
And the ending? It’s somewhat satisfying. Somewhat not. Bingham found some connections, but he’s more uncertain than ever. One thing that is certain: a fully human person with human emotions cannot thrive in a job like Bingham’s. And if a person like Bingham can change to no longer be the kind of person who can thrive in such a job, maybe the rest of our corporatized society can too.
Of course, sixteen years later, we’re still grappling with a world of uncertainty and with minimal connection. In some ways, it’s even worse than the world the film depicted– at least in “Up in the Air,” society recognizes that firing people over Zoom was a poor idea. In our world, it’s normalized. “Up in the Air” doesn’t have the answers to that uncertainty. But it provides some catharsis just to keep surviving. And in a world that feels at times just as hopeless as the one Ryan Bingham inhabits, maybe that’s enough.
