about an "issue", but also about the characters and a bittersweet lot in life

Rating: 9/10 (25 December 2009)

Jason Reitman is a filmmaker that cares about the issues of the day, or of some day or other. But I don't think he consciously goes out of his way to make a "statement" about lobbyists and tobacco with Thank You For Smoking or about teen pregnancy with Juno. Such as the case with Up in the Air, I think he was attracted first, from the book his film is based on, by the characters and the story of this particular guy with a very uncomfortable, morally repugnant but somehow available job of being sent across the country to fire people, personally, and send them on their merry way. Yet right now, even more than teen pregnancy or the demons of lobbyists, unemployment is hitting many people, everywhere. In Detroit, a city that's featured in one particularly disturbing scene in this film, the unemployment level is somewhere between 30 and 40% depending on the time of day.
So it's bound to strike a chord with people, not least of which because of Reitman's usage of real people who have been fired featured in the film, spouting off to Clooney's Ryan Bingham, angry or teary or berserk or, in one most troubling case, perfectly calm. And yet what makes Reitman a strong storyteller is not that he cares first about hitting the hammer on the audience with the message (he's not, say, Paul Haggis with his dramatization), but that he wants to tell this story of a guy who we might not even know actually exists, until that moment he steps into a room and fires someone. Or, perhaps, one sees in a hotel reception room giving a presentation about "How to Backpack Your Life." It features a sharp screenplay that's wise about the nature of human connectivity, the lack of it in this character, and his realization of what's missing in his efficient but cold life.
What's also clever in the story is how Ryan Bingham, played by an as-always cool and witty and very slightly vulnerable George Clooney, is also not entirely safe with his own job. His work of going out on the road, which he does more than 3/4 of the year, is threatened by young upstart Natalie's 'fresh' idea of putting a computer-cam link up so people can be fired right over their monitors. She goes out on the road with Ryan, however, and sees how it's really done, the actual humanity that goes in the process of telling someone they've been let go (not to mention the equally unsettling task of handing a booklet over on starting over). It's through this road trip that we see Natalie's own weaknesses revealed, but more-so she brings out some of the ambivalence of Ryan, too. Mostly as Ryan has a fling with a professional woman also on the road (Vera Farmiga), and what really unfolds from a seemingly safe, long-distance romance.
Oh, there are one or two little scenes that do get in the way of it being truly phenomenal (there's one scene in particular, as Ryan and Natalie, charming and shrewd played by Anna Kendrick), argue on a pier, where she lays out everything wrong in Ryan's life, and it's too-spelled-out for the audience when we know what's wrong or conflicted already). But these shouldn't get in the way of what is another success for Reitman as a filmmaker. He navigates this tale of this man who is so comfortable with the ritual of travel, of hitting that impressive and pathetic plateau of ten million frequent flier miles, that he can't see any change ahead, either in that or in how he views his life with his family or his potential love interest. I won't reveal what happens between Ryan and Alex, but it's easy to say that it's not an easy turn out to the story. Just when you think Reitman's starting to get a little too comfortable with his characters and pleasant situations (i.e. wedding scenes), he pulls the rug out, and it makes sense completely.
Up in the Air is funny, but completely disarming in equal beats (sometimes equal scenes) by it's tragedy. It's bound for Oscar contention and it deserves it, for its intelligence and observation and performances, all top notch. It's of and for our times without forcing it.