a toss-up between keeping lofty dreams and discovering the empty reality

Rating: 7/10 (15 February 2010)

Jason Reitman directs Up in the Air, a story he began writing in 2002 with Sheldon Turner when the US economy was thriving. It was supposed to be his first feature, but he ended up making Thank You for Smoking (2005) and Juno (2007) first. With the onset of the economic recession, the delay in Up in the Air's release became timelier.
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney)'s job has him flying around the country as a professional firer. He enjoys his lack of attachment and even moonlights as a motivational speaker to spread his philosophy of having no baggage, concretized by a convenient pseudo-relationship Ryan has with his lady equivalent, Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga). Despite this, he successfully empathizes with the difficult, emotional turbulence firing people takes; he takes no joy out of this but he does have a secret wish: to rack up 10M frequent flyer miles and attain the ultimate elite card. So when his company takes on young upstart Natalie Keener (Twilight's Anna Kendrick), who proposes a cost-cutting measure by firing people online instead, Ryan has a lot more convincing to do, which could challenge the very core of the philosophy he preaches.
I laud the way the characters are written because they are all complex. Clooney's role is so eerily reflective of how he portrays himself in real-life (being the eternal bachelor) that it isn't a stretch to see him play Ryan. However, his performance also allowed audiences a glimpse of his vulnerable side, which his usually cocky demeanor never shows. While Oscar Best Actress nominee Farmiga did her usual disrobing, the surprise this time is that she used a body double, having just given birth. Performance wise, her muted expressions were the perfect blend for the grand reveal her character delivers near the end. 1998 Tony Best Actress nominee Anna Kendrick was able to hold her own beside the two stars as Natalie; she successfully gets you to admire her, hate her and feel sorry for her all at once.
If the clips of the people reacting to being fired makes you flinch at its rawness, it may be because they were real people who were recently laid off. They were reportedly asked to look at the camera as if it were the person who fired them and reenact what they did, or say what they hoped they had. Juxtaposing that with images of vacant office spaces made the scenes feel real for the audience, an effort that effectively translates genuine emotion on screen.
I would have preferred a different ending, perhaps one that ties everything up neatly, but if the objective is to stay truthful, then life never really turns out to be that simple. We already know that we won't always get what we want, but in the off chance that we do achieve it, it sucks to sometimes realize that it wasn't what we expected; it's a toss-up between keeping lofty dreams and discovering the empty reality.