A film review by Craig J. Koban December 29, 2009 |
||
Rank: #21 |
||
UP IN THE AIR
Ryan Bingham: George Clooney / Alex Goran: Vera Farmiga / Natalie
Keener: Anna Kendrick / Craig Gregory: Jason Bateman / Kara: Amy
Morton |
||
"The slower we move, the faster we die." Ryan Bigham (George Clooney) in UP IN THE AIR UP IN THE AIR
provides a portal into one of 2009’s most fascinating and complex
characters: For 322 days a year, Ryan Bingham travels on airplanes all
over the country and works as a self-described Termination Facilitator,
or rather a person that goes to companies that have executives that are
too weaselly and meek minded to sack their own employees and does it for
them. Each day he walks into a different office somewhere in America –
whether it is Detroit, St. Louis, Wichita, etc – and gets a list of
employees that the company wants to axe in an effort to downsize during
the harsh economic recession.
Most of these decent minded and hard working people are, of course,
frustrated, terrified, and incredulous by the news of their termination,
but Bingham – with a Vulcan-like emotional detachment and calm spoken
resolve – reassures his victims that their firing is not an end, but a
new beginning with ample opportunity Bingham
is a figure of puzzling contradictions: he’s devilishly good and
confident at his “termination” job and has deep vented pride in his
professionalism. He
professes to be liberating people from the doldrums of their jobs so that
they can go on to achieve their dreams, even while he’s actually
destroying them. On
the side, he also manages to give motivational self-help lectures about
keeping your life pared down to what you can fit in one backpack…often
to the people that have most likely been canned before.
Even though his job involves copious amounts of emotional
baggage, he loves what he does.
He’s married to it 24/7.
He has no wife, no kids, and no long-term aspirations to have
either. He
barely has a permanent residence and resides in a shoddy and sterile
one-bedroom apartment that is essentially empty.
He has no personal connections with people other than the ones he
fires. He
lives in a culturally hermetic cocoon that has segregated himself from
anyone and everyone…and it has made him an empty and meaningless figure
trapped in an increasingly isolated world.
The more he allows himself to be trapped within it, the more hallow
he becomes, and the tougher it becomes for him to admit it. There is possibly no
actor today that could have played Bingham other than George Clooney,
whom has revealed time and time again why he is one of the most dependable
leading men and actors of his generation.
What he does is not easy.
He’s one of those exceedingly rare performers that can nonchalantly
morph movie star charm and charisma alongside delicate and nuanced
emotional vulnerability and sincerity.
The man can play cocky and suave bravado in his sleep, to be sure,
but what Clooney never gets much credit for is how secure and adept he is
an dialing into the flawed, world weary souls (like on display in SYRIANA
and MICHAEL CLAYTON).
In UP IN THE AIR Clooney - much as he did in CLAYTON - musters up
all of his slick, wise-cracking energy and easygoing magnetism to show a man
that is a pillar of self-confidence that, in the end, grows to understand
what a depersonalized and disconnected life he is leading.
The central tragedy of Bingham that Clooney seems to understand so
resoundingly well through his performance is that he is a lonely,
empty vessel of a man that may or may not be able to rescue himself. For Bingham,
perhaps the only way to live his life is up in the air; at one point he
matter-of-factly tells someone that "moving is living," and hid daily grind
of airport security, rent-a-cars, and high-end posh hotels is like a drug
to him. The intriguing angle
to the film is how he finds so much self-gratification with the simple
swipe of a plastic card: he has at his disposal innumerable key cards
and VIP passes for just about everything and relishes in his rigidly
orderly world. In many
ways, Bingham is a cold and solute reflection into out modern technology
and consumer psyche: our systemized world has many feeling it has
connected us more, but at point of fact it has separated us more than
ever. Since Bingham
loves his freewheeling mile-high occupation, he feels attacked when his
employer (played with a perfectly cold and underscored cynical edge by the
great Jason Bateman) decides that, to cuts costs down during the
recession, he is flirting with doing away with having his employees
travel the globe to fire people. He introduces Bingham to a hotshot college grad named Natalie
Keener (Anna Kendrick, a far cry away from he work in the TWILIGHT
series) that has big ideas to modernize how their company fires people.
Her plans are to set up elaborate Internet enabled webcams to fire
people via live chat, which all but corrupts everything that Bingham is
proud to stand for. During
his whole
life he has perfected the art of the one-on-one, poker faced stand-off, not to mention
that he has developed the skill set required to pass on the harshest of
bad news on to people that don’t deserves it without making it personal.
Seeing this career minded, determined, but hopelessly naïve young
girl undermine his career scorns him to no end.
Reluctantly, he is ordered to take her under his wings on his last
travels in order to show her the ropes of how to let people go with, oddly
enough, some humanity. Bingham’s life
is thrown two more fateful curveballs: The first one comes with a chance
encounter and later fling he has with another frequent flyer business
woman named Alex (Vera Farmiga, an actress with sultry, vixen-like eyes
and beauty that matches gels harmoniously with her razor sharp wit and
comic timing)
that she uproariously describes herself to Bingham as “you without the vagina.”
Their initial flirtation in a hotel bar then segues into a
full-fledged
fling while on travels (a hilarious moment ensues when, after sex, they
both prop up their laptops to schedule their next quickie).
She’s the closest thing to a relationship he has, but they
screenplay never panders to reducing their relationship to simplistic
formula of a romcom. Then there is a very interesting story detour involving
Bingham coming to his semi-estranged sister’s wedding where he is
coerced into helping the groom (Danny McBride) come to grips with his
pre-wedding day cold feet. In
one of the film’s many transfixing moments, Bingham tries to sell the
man on marriage while, deep down, reveling in his hatred of the
institution.
The irony here is both funny and depressing. Yet, that’s what
some of the best comedies are able to do: mix humor and pathos in equal
dosages and let the laughs speak out to darker truths about the human
condition. UP IN THE AIR also
does a thankless job of being a timely reflection on our current
socio-economic times, which is more than exceeding the status quo for
most screen comedies. The
film taps into many people’s worst nightmares: waking up, going to work,
and being dealt with the crippling and immediate blow of unemployment
after decades of loyal service. What’s
key here is that the film never expresses these moments for cheap comic
effect (yes, many of the scenes are played for laughs) but the interviews
that Bingham has with the folks he terminates still have a chilling
veracity and heartfelt sincerity. One
scene in particular is a small scale masterpiece of economy and finely
tuned acting, and it involves Clooney pulling out all the stops to
spin-doctor his latest victim (the pitch perfect J.K. Simmons) into
thinking that his job has all but held him back for years.
You want to both chuckle and tear up at the same time. The performances,
again, are crucial here for the intended effect, and Clooney gives a
performance that will garner him another Oscar nomination.
Anna Kendrick has also been garnering much Academy buzz with her
portrayal of her monumentally wet-behind the-ears downsizer, and she is a
pure delight and revelation as her fast-talking, outwardly assured, but
inwardly vulnerable rookie. Two
other performances are maybe getting a little lost in the limelight of
Clooney’s and Kendrick’s: the first would be Farmiga, an actress I
have been championing in films ranging from THE
DEPARTED to RUNNING SCARED
and she's got that the type of smoldering and mercurial sexual intensity
alongside having
chemistry with her male lead, but she also hints at some lingering secrets
beneath her assertive façade. This is breakthrough work for her. The other is a quietly tender performance by Melanie Lynskey
playing Bingham's stressed out sister-to-be-wed; she was so quietly funny in
THE INFORMANT! and here she has a few brief, but moving scenes where she
reveals years of pent up resentment for her older brother with the most
modest of non-verbal signals. UP IN THE AIR was adapted from a 2001 Walt Kirn novel of the same name by Jason Reitman, who despite being barely in his thirties has amassed a recent directorial resume that highlights him as one of the most intelligent, edgy, and ferociously talented young filmmakers of the last decade. He made the nail-biting social satire THANK-YOU FOR SMOKING and the single best film of 2007 in JUNO and once again with UP IN THE AIR he displays how masterful he is at making mainstream, populist efforts with the flavoring and edge of an indie darling. UP IN THE AIR is not as faultless as his two predecessors (the central relationship between Bingham and Keener follows a fairly preordained path, not to mention that some plot secrets are telegraphed a bit too easily), but the film still remains a caustic, frequently humorous, and brutally honest portrait of one man’s increasing degeneration into loneliness and isolation. At one late point
in the film (while in flight) another character asks Bingham where he’s
from, to which he melancholically responds, “Here.”
The film’s comedy is here in abundance, but at its core resides
an uncompromising pessimism. |
||
|
||