I like this movie

Rating: 8/10 (1 July 2014)

I really like this movie. At first I found the locations -- airports, airplanes and boardrooms -- jarringly clinical. But I guess they do serve to make a point. Here is a world in which humans are expected to detach from their real world and from their soul and family and act like robots in the service of company profits. The acting is great but it's the script and direction that shines. To me, the scene that sums up the movie is when George Clooney's character, the businessman who flies around the world firing people, is ecstatic to finally meet his goal of massive frequent flyer points. And all he wins are a few trinkets, and a meeting with an airline executive clearly amused at how anyone would be excited by such a feat. It's obscene how meaningless the achievement is. Yet many of us pursue such marketing trifles as meaningful goals in our lives. Hilarious, when you think about it. The George Clooney character has charisma, and he is smart and resourceful and yet he has this horrible job that devastates people he doesn't know, and he is a master at repressing any empathy, at not seeing them as human beings. And the move shows how he pays a heavy price, personally, as well. But does he, himself, realise that? The final scene, to me, is a masterpiece, because it shows how he does have a choice in this bizarre world. And what is he going to choose? It's a choice all of us have -- to engage with the world, or detach from it. To act ethically or unethically. To try to put down roots, or stay up in the air.