Meticulous Film-Craft

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2010)

Up in the Air is a hard movie to classify. I think the best I can do is say that this it is a drama with comedic elements, but not what we would call these days a "dramedy." Be careful calling this a romance of any kind. George Clooney (Batman: The Worst One) brings his charismatic A-Game to Jason Reitman's film and gets help with brilliant supporting turns from Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga (whom I raved about in Orphan).
Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, an elite business-class frequent flier who also dabbles in motivational speaking. Bingham's full-time employment is as a for-hire executioner that companies come to to do their dirty work during these hard economic times. Bingham travels away from "home" 300 days a year due to this job and logs over a quarter of a million frequent flier miles annually.
Due his on-the-go lifestyle, Bingham has developed a personal philosophy about life, relationships, etc. that is something like a mash-up between Buddhist non-attachment and the juvenile Ayn Rand superman. Bingham's life is a stop-over of one night stands; carry-on luggage; hotel and airline executive privileges; and avoiding everyone that is not himself — including his family. Probably only George Clooney could pull off playing such a jerk and still come across as likable. This approach to life is also the one that Bingham pimps during his side job of motivational speaking.
Ann Kendrick is fresh from college upstart Natalie Keener who is hired by Bingham's company to revolutionize the axe-for-hire business. In short she wants to take the terminators out of the air and put them in a seat to do the deed by video conferencing. Bingham disagrees with the change and brings up enough points that his boss (Jason Bateman) decides to send Keener to the skies with Bingham to learn how to tweak her program pursuant to real life experience.
The last ingredient in this would-be-Oscar recipe is Vera Farmiga as Alex Goran. I have only seen Farmiga previously in the sleeper hit horror movie, Orphan, this past summer. I was stunned by how excellent she was in that movie playing the distressed and maligned mother. I made a note to myself to keep an eye out for her in this film. I did and she did not disappoint. Alex is Bingham's foil. What he does – she does; from non-attachment selfishness and one night stands to valuing airline and hotel rewards as priceless commodities. The two engage in amusing banter the first time they share the screen and the potent chemistry never lets up from that point on.
The movie is built around several layers of character interactions: Bingham and Natalie as he shows her the ropes and, as unlikely as it would initially appear, the human side to what he does; Bingham and Alex as they explore a completely casual relationship amidst constant plane-hopping that may be growing, against Bingham's will, into something else; Natalie and her growth from young gun for hire to an actual human; each of the character's respective relationships with their family; and the lives of all three against the back drop of the corporate world in times of fiscal turmoil.
There is more to Up in the Air than just that, but I would be ruining some of the nice work with character arcs and the subtly of some of the allegorical moments if I went into it much deeper. I will say that scenes at Bingham's sister's wedding and when Clooney, Farmiga, and Kendrick share the screen are sublime*.
*This includes an awesome cameo and performance by (not so) Young MC. Bust a move.
I personally delighted in the complete deconstructing of the third act of the film and its opposition to derivative formula. The end result is what makes Up in the Air such a hard movie to label. It's not what you think.
I also found it interesting that Clooney's Ryan Bingham is not the biggest jerk in the film. The fact that he is not — and who actually is — is a stunner.
Up in the Air is a meticulously crafted film with few or no flaws. However, though it reaches to a slightly deeper level than one may expect, it still lacks resounding profundity. That simply means that Up in the Air is the best film it can be, but it is not the best film of the year. Each of the main three performances, however, do merit some discussion come awards time.