Up in the Air

Most of us willnever face a hangman on the gallows or stare into the rifle barrels of a firingsquad. We’re more likely to meet the sort of postmodern executioner played byGeorge Clooney in Up in the Air, aman who will carry out the orders to deprive us of our livelihood rather thanour life. Sadly, for some of us, livelihood and life amount to almost the samething.

For RyanBingham (Clooney), his career of ruining the lives of others is just a job.Nothing personal, you understand. He gives motivational speeches in which herationalizes his profession with a Darwinian philosophy. “Some animals aremeant to carry each other. We are not those animals,” he tells the audience.“The slower we move, the faster we die ... We are sharks.”

And like ashark, Bingham has no fixed home. Directed by Jason Reitman (Juno) from the novel by Walter Kim, Up inthe Air is the ultimate story of contemporary rootlessness. Binghamis virtually a man without a country, jetting between nearly identicalairports, living from room service in nearly identical hotels, racking up350,000 miles a year as a terminator, doing the dirty work of downsizing in ashrinking job market. Lacking meaningful community or human values, Binghamseems perfectly wired for his heartless occupation.

Up in the Air is a wry comedy darkened by pathos. In one of thefilm’s most painful moments, Bingham’s young trainee Natalie (Anna Kendrick) isfiring someone via laptop. She eliminates the job of a 57-year old man, atwo-decade veteran of his company, presenting her sobbing victim with nothingbut cut and paste platitudes. Although the fired man doesn’t know it, Natalie(with Bingham over her shoulder) is sitting in the next room.

Even awhite-collar nomadic raider like Bingham originally came from somewhere and hisbirthplace, it turns out, was a small town in northern Wisconsin. He returns for his kid sister’swedding with his occasional sex partner, Alex (Vera Farmiga), an executivewhose path intersects his at many airline hubs. Soon enough, even theemotionally glib and disconnected Bingham begins to fall in love.

Since Reitmanis no Hollywood hack, Up in the Air resolutely refuses to follow the expected flightplan. Suffused with sadness, Bingham seems to doomed to become a present-dayFlying Dutchman, never to touch the ground for long.