Firing people, a business that knows no crisis... in fact, it counts on it!

Rating: 9/10 (17 November 2019)

"Up in the Air", from 'hip' director Jason Reitman, takes us back to that traumatizing year of 2009 where the future couldn't look any grimmer and anyone with a job felt like belonging to a Forbes club. I'm talking from experience, following that hypocritical euphemism, P&G "let me go" at the end of 2008 and for six months, I couldn't count how many jobs I've applied to, how many fresh alumni friends I reached out to, and the same answer kept popping up: right now, we don't hire. I finally got me a job but that was a close call and it wasn't in Europe anyway; the crisis hadn't spread yet to North Africa.
But how about Ryan Bingham's job? Surely one that was begging for a film adaptation: his mission is to travel all around American big cities... to fire people! Their bosses don't have the guts to do the dirty work, it might seem ludicrous but it's not that easy firing someone, it means a lot of paperwork, many legal ordeals, the kind of stuff you'd better leave to a specialist with a smile as polished as his briefcase. And that job reminded me of a gag from the "Simpsons" episode when Bart's "Angry Dad" was published on the Internet; realizing the company went bankrupt, he's socked that "Bubbles can burst" and one of the workers who came to collect the furniture say "It's a Golden Age for the repo business". In the worst financial crisis after a certain Black Thursday in 1929, Bingham's company is living a real Golden Age.
The merit of Reitman is to deal with a very unpleasant subject, one about people's lives being ruined basically in a rather tactful manner, and still making Ryan's job exciting to some degree, after all, it's not exactly life and death situation (although...). The film starts with a visually delightful opening sequence showing many air-view landscapes of American cities, the sequence provides the sort of dreamy imagery that might even cure someone who's got fear of flying (including myself). These are the sights Ryan enjoys on a daily basis, spending more days aboard planes under cotton-like clouds than Irish people under a rainy sky. The sequence provides us comforting images before we discover what the game is about.
The film opens with various documentary-like reactions of people seeing their existential edifices collapse, It's touching and poignant but never pathetic, a sequence with Zach Galifianakis sets up the job in a didactic way, it's all about selling the same speech, telling people that anyone who "build an empire" sat in a similar place and that's what strengthened them. Looking at these people's devastated faces, we know they don't buy the line, but somewhat they accept it because they're at such a low point that anything cheerful is welcome. In another wonderfully written scene with J.K. Simmons, his character says at one point "you're supposed to cheer me up". Bingham knows he's got to deal with adult and rational people but in a very irrational and emotionally fragile situation. It's a tough job and he takes it very seriously.
And one thing for sure, after the first expositional act, we get the idea; Bingham travels across airport check-points as smoothly and confidently as Henry Hill taking Karen from the side-entrance to the restaurant in "Goodfellas", it's his territory, his reason to be, as he says "to know me is to fly with me". Hotels are his second domain, in one of them, he meets Alex (Vera Ferniga) a woman whose job is never explicated, but all we know is that it exposes her to the same routine than Bingham. After a few introductions, they compare their bank cards and their experiences with car rentals and hotels and Bingham reveals his lifelong dream, collecting one million miles, and the dialogue in that scene, with all its double entendre is one of the film's delights. There's a reason Clooney was perfect for that role.
There's a lot of 2009 Clooney in that competent man but estranged to his family or the very notion of family living occasional romances with no tomorrows. It's a hackneyed sentence but it fits him perfectly, he's the man "married to his job". But one woman might contradict this plan, a pint-sized ambitious newcomer who came up with a new idea: in-sourcing. Why go to the extent of travelling all around the world when everything can be settled through videoconference? The boss (Jason Bateman) finds the idea interesting, but Bingham finds the right way to tell her that technology isn't exactly the best way to handle human relationships and suggest an initiating tour so she can understand the real intricacies of the business. As Natalie, Kendrick plays the opposite of Alex, she goes from confidence to disillusion while the more mature Alex is confident but resigned. In many aspects, they're the most human characters of the film and the indirect triggers to Bingham's hidden humanity hidden under his cynical armor.
There's a little running gag involving a miniature picture of his sister and future husband he carries in various places like that gnome in "Amelie", but it takes the relationships with both Natalie and Alex to grasp the emptiness of his life. Natalie's idealism might be shaken but never turn into cynicism, as for Nathalie, a scene had me scared: when Clooney left one of his darling conferences about his 'backpack' metaphor, racing across the airport, I was afraid it would be one of these contrived 'declaration' scenes but it's fascinating the way the film tie the two themes together: love and jobs.
The final montage shows fired people saying how they went through it thanks to their family or their beloved one, it's not just a light of hope but a challenging ending after a fascinating character study: can you live without a job? Or without love? One is for a living? But is living possible without the other?