Out of Frame: Up in the Air
Are you one of the many who have been laid off, fired, sacked, or otherwise sent to an unemployment office in the past year? You've probably had more than one revenge fantasy about whomever it was that delivered the news to you. In Up in the Air, writer/director Jason Reitman paints a target on George Clooney's back and challenges his audience to identify with a guy who delivers this kind of bad news for a living to total strangers.
Clooney's Ryan Bingham spends over 300 days a year on the road tearing apart peoples' lives in between speaking engagements where he espouses a personal philosophy of calculated solitude and detachment. It's a philosophy that has served him well, as a man with a collection of VIP travel club cards, who is more at home in an airport Admiral's club lounge or a hotel bar than in the spartan apartment he keeps back "home" in Omaha. It's a testament to Clooney's charm (and the seemingly effortless wit of Reitman's script) that not only do we not hate Ryan, but we like him in spite of ourselves.
Ryan's job, being an efficient and tactful executioner, is, on the surface, incidental to the story. It provides a reason for him to be constantly on the road, and the sets the table for the hook that drives the plot, in the form of Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a whip-smart business school phenom who thinks Ryan's company can slash costs by firing people via teleconference. Ryan takes her on the road to demonstrate the importance of doing this work in person. For a time, Up in the Air seems like it's going to be a fairly standard odd couple road movie, with a side of romantic comedy in the form of Alex (Vera Farmiga), another constant traveler who challenges Ryan's no-strings lifestyle via a burgeoning romance in their occasional meetings and late night text messages.
What makes Up in the Air subtly extraordinary is that Reitman fools us into thinking that the movie can be pigeonholed into either of those genres. It can't, and one of the pleasures of the film is watching Reitman blossom into a filmmaker light years ahead of the one who made the underwhelming Thank You For Smoking and the overly self-conscious Juno. The film could have succeeded as either the road comedy or romance, and would have been enjoyable in either case. It's a solid piece of entertainment on both fronts. But Reitman dresses his film up as slick Hollywood formula before revealing that it is something far more substantial, and something far darker.
When Reitman does his big reveal, it's not surprising for its substance. Many may guess the content of the slight twist before the movie gets there. And in this case, the plot point isn't what's important; it's the fact that the movie is brave enough to let it happen, and to play it out to its unconventional conclusion.
In the end, nothing is quite as it seems here. Clooney's co-stars do more heavy lifting here than most people in a film with the star, and Kendrick and Farmiga's characters are more vital, and more layered, than female supporting players are usually allowed to be when matched up with a likeable matinee idol. It's still Ryan's movie, but his personal relationship with Alex and professional one with Natalie make it into a small ensemble piece rather than a straight star vehicle.
Reitman engages in sly casting by throwing in goofball comic actors like Zach Galifianakis as a fired employee and Danny McBride as Ryan's future brother-in-law. Again, he creates the illusion that they're here for laughs (which they deliver), when they have real dramatic importance to the development of Ryan's character.
And finally, there are all those laid-off workers. If you find that they don't look so much like actors, and that the pained looks in their eyes when they sit across the table describing their emotions feels all too real, you'd be right. Reitman uses non-actors who really have been through the kind of layoffs depicted in the film. In semi-documentary segments that echo the couples interviews in Annie Hall, they deliver some of the most deeply felt performances in the film. And they show that even if Reitman has us focused on the loneliness of his main characters, he's well aware that they're not the people in this movie faced with the biggest hurdles. It's a sensitive touch in a beautifully executed film.
View the trailer.
Directed by Jason Reitman.
Starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick.
Running time: 109 minutes.
Rated R for language and some sexual content.
Opens today at Georgetown, expands to more area theaters over the rest of the month.