Choose Your Attachments Wisely

Rating: 9/10 (17 January 2010)

A deeply philosophical film. Everything worked, but I didn't like the stark message that love and attachments are empty promises--that ultimately we die alone. There was a coldness and cynicism and to the entire film, but we are left with the idea that the main character, played effectively by George Clooney, may be ready for a change. This is not a feel-good film, but it will make you think.
The casting was superb, particularly the character Natalie, a know-it-all-but-clueless Cornell MBA, who goes on the road with Clooney's character and gets an education about the real world.
This film is highly relevant in these times of traumatic corporate downsizing and economic stress--people losing not just their livelihoods, but their homes and even their their lives.
The film is a study in the Buddhist principle that suffering arisings from desire and attachment. This is driven home, without ever mentioning religion. The more attached you become to someone or to an object, the greater you suffer when it is taken away. That's intuitive, but the film questions these attachments and desires and shows how empty life can be lived without them. Choose your attachments carefully, the film infers, and a goal of airline mileage credits seems to be the one attachment Clooney's character allows himself--something attainable, that he has complete control over.
But the film isn't entirely cynical about losing your job. The point is made in several places that it can be the opportunity to change your life to something better.
The sets were perfectly rendered--airport lobbies, check-in gates, hotels, airliners... .
In so many great films, the music feels intrusive. When I notice the sound track, it pulls me out of the story. The music here was just right.
The cinematography was great, magical. I was captivated from beginning to end, made to forget that I was in a theater.