Happy to be ‘Up in the Air’ with Clooney (3.5/5)

Up in the Air

Starring: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick
Directed by: Jason Reitman
Rating: R for language and some sexual content.
Running time: 1 hours, 49 minutes.

“Up in the Air” fits into one of my favorite movie niches — idealistic with an important sense of realism. It’s as much about tossing a life into the wind and seeing where the pieces land as it is about George Clooney’s debonair smile.

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham who is, in essence, a fire-for-hire. He is employed by a company that sells its services as “career transition counselors” — basically, they travel around the world to let people go. But the job serves as a convenient backdrop for the real destination of the movie — the discovery of Ryan Bingham.

Ryan is a man with no ties and no meaningful connections in his life. His Nebraskan “apartment” is bare save for the most absolute, primitive essentials, and his relationship with his sisters is strained at best and nonexistent in actuality. Ryan’s wallet is a testament to his true nature — stuffed full of prestigious and rare membership cards to hotels and airlines. His home lies in travel.

While on his firing sprees, Ryan also picks up “motivational” speaking engagements, encouraging attendees to erase from their lives all of the baggage that keeps them tied down — knick-knacks, furniture, entire homes and, at life’s heaviest, other people.

Ryan’s solitary philosophies are questioned by two women who crash land into his life, challenging his autopilot existence. One threatens his way of work (intelligent, upstart Cornell grad Natalie Keener, played by Anna Kendrick, who has found a way to fire people over the Internet, thus making Ryan’s traveling outdated and expensive); the other, his way of detachment (Vera Farmiga as fellow air nomad Alex Goran, who is looking for a casual, fun relationship and doesn’t anticipate the blossoming feelings within Ryan).

Although about half of the movie is dedicated to the Ryan-Alex “relationship,” I was much more intrigued by his interactions with young Natalie. By use of video conferencing, Natalie has removed the last human element in their career. In her eyes, the process of firing a person can be neatly diagrammed out in a flowchart. Ryan, panicked at the thought of being “grounded” in Omaha, is told to take Natalie on one of his final trips by his boss, Craig Gregory (a smug Jason Bateman).

Though Ryan’s motives seem honorable in wanting to make personal contact with those being fired in order to ease their pain, he never seems to truly believe that himself. His only goal in life is to collect 10 million miles on American Airlines and he uses his job as the perfect opportunity to work on his collection. Ryan is ever detached while Natalie is ever more drawn into the emotions of the people she is firing.

The movie strikes close to home with unemployment rates soaring across the country. And if the scenes with newly laid-off employees seem quite realistic, that’s because, apart from some noticeable famous actors, many of the onscreen former workers are real people who were recently let go from their jobs.

Clooney is at his prime — he makes a dreaded “career transition counselor” appear charming and engaging and a life as a vagabond seem oddly attractive as only he can. The movie wouldn’t have survived a trip with any other leading man.

As with any flight, the real star is the pilot — in this case, director Jason Reitman, mind behind the offbeat comedies “Juno” and “Thank You for Smoking.” Reitman’s adaptation of Walter Kirn’s novel proved interesting and captivating. “Up in the Air” is a great film to end the old decade and welcome in the new.

3.5 of 5 stars