I saw Up in the Air during my holiday blog hiatus and, now that I’m back, I want to write about it. The distance from it has made that more difficult, as this is the third draft of this review I’ve made since the new year started, each varying wildly from the last and one in particular full of a several hundred word rant about Brett Ratner’s 2000 film The Family Man that, I swear to you, eventually tied into Up in the Air somehow. It’s not that I don’t know whether or not I like the movie – I love it, and it’s easily Jason Reitman’s best film to date, eclipsing both Thank You For Smoking and Juno – it’s that I’m not sure what to say about it, if that makes any sense.
So I’ll say this: Up in the Air is a lean and efficient movie about isolation and the death of the American corporate ideal that doesn’t linger or brood, just moves quickly and sharply from destination to destination, much like George Clooney’s Ryan Bingham does.
Clooney inhabits Bingham completely, a marvel of quick wit and total human efficiency (much like the film as a whole) who spends 90% of the year flying from company to company firing people and conducting seminars on paring down human and material connections to what you can carry in a backpack (hint: people don’t fit into backpacks). Clooney is likeable, good at his job and driven. His ultimate pipe-dream goal? The acquisition of ten million frequent flier miles, and he’d be the youngest ever to achieve that feat. Much like you’d expect from a man who practically lives in airports (the most powerful and persistent example of being completely alone in a crowded room) he’s a man who has isolated himself, who prefers it. Why? It’s unimportant, so we’re never told, but a few lines of dialogue hint at some kind of trauma in his past.
Although the movie is Clooney’s from beginning to end, he doesn’t carry it alone. The entire supporting cast shines – Vera Farmiga is basically effortless and Anna Kendrick shows a shocking amount of depth for someone last cast as Bella Swan’s sorta-bitchy friend. And J.K. Simmons, Jason Bateman, Melanie Lynskey, Danny McBride and Zach Galifianakis are great in the small roles they play.
In addition to all that other stuff, Up in the Air is, very simply, a Peter Pan story – it is, very literally, about a boy who neither wants to grow up nor stop flying and what happens when both of those dreams are threatened. Effervescent, funny and charming for most of its run-time, the story packs a flurry of rapid-fire gut punches in at the end and is, ultimately, all the more effective for it. Even if it weren’t the last film I saw in 2009, it would still be one of my favorites.
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Anna Kendrick got a freakin’ Tony nomination when she was, like, 12. She’s done a lot more than play Bella’s bitchy best friend (though she does that really well, too).
Can’t wait to see the film!
Also,
I’ve just moved, so if you could update your link to me that would be awesome.
My old URL: http://boyleml.wordpress.com
My NEW URL: http://mandyboyle.com
Thanks so much!
Mandy