Movie Review: Up In the Air

by Ellen Sterling

Sunday, December 27, 2009

George Clooney and Anna Kendrick talk business.
Courtesy of Paramount

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has a goal. He wants to amass a specific number of frequent flyer miles on American Airlines so he can meet the head pilot and receive recognition awarded to only six other passengers in the history of the airline’s frequent flyer program. It is his work that causes him to live his life Up In the Air, in airports and on airplanes as he crisscrosses the United States, dropping into various cities along the way to fire people because their employers lack the — um — nerve to do so.

We, as well as his family, tend to believe Bingham’s life is an empty one. He doesn’t. Airports and planes are home to him. They also appear to be home to Alex (Vera Farmiga) , a woman he meets in a bar one night who’s all business. Yes, life is good for Ryan Bingham. Until Natalie (Anna Kendrick) comes to work for Career Transitions, Inc., (CTI), Bingham’s employer. That’s when things get sticky.

Natalie brings with her a plan to cut down on CTI’s expenditures by firing people via videoconferencing, rather than in person. And, as this is going on, Alex begins to get to Bingham in ways he heretofore thought impossible. Ryan Bingham’s simple life is getting complicated.

This is writer-director Jason Reitman’s follow-up to Juno, and Thank You For Smoking, two wonderful, fresh films .And, here, he used real unemployed people to tell their stories. This also seems to be the only 2009 film that actually is rooted in 2009’s economy and, perhaps, that is why it is so highly acclaimed.

The National Board of Review named this Best Film, Clooney and Kendrick Best Actor and Supporting Actress and named it Best Adapted Screenplay. It’s been nominated for seven Golden Globes and a slew of other awards. Without Clooney and all his charm, one suspects, Up In the Air would merely be an unpleasant story about unpleasant people doing an unpleasant job.

The nicest surprise here is Anna Kendrick as Natalie. Blessed with youthful certainty that she is performing a real service to those she — dare I say it? — fires, she makes you want to know Natalie better. She’s shiny and new and to watch her as the enormity of what she’s doing dawns on her is a revealation. Vera Farmiga is, by turns, a delight not a delight and she is eminently believable as the edgy, modern business woman who, under it all, may just have a heart.

The rest of the supporting cast includes Jason Bateman as Clooney’s employer and JK Simmons and Zach Galifianakis as two of those who are fired. As always, when I see them in relatively small roles, I’d like to see more of them.

Up In the Air is a timely and apt commentary on American society today. And, it’s fun to watch. (For Las Vegans in the audience, it was also an apparently apt commentary on the Luxor Hotel, as when Clooney’s character commented on it, a cheer rose in the dark.) As much as it is of today, one kind of doubts it will last as social commentary as, say, the films of Preston Sturges or Frank Capra have.

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