The New Year period is the perennial ‘down-time’ phase of Hollywood; a brief respite after the slew of Christmas blockbusters before it all kicks back into gear from March and we’re once again watching big explosive messes. Yet it is in this quiet zone that some of the year’s best movies make their appearance in our cinemas; No Country for Old Man, The Wrestler, and quite possibly, Up in the Air.
By turns comic, tragic, wry and poignant, Jason Reitman’s latest directorial proves to build upon his success in the wake of Thank You for Smoking and Juno.
Up in the Air details the life of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who utilises his job as corporate downsizer – firing people whose bosses are too cowardly to do so – to achieve his lifetime goal; ten million frequent flyer miles. If this sounds anodyne, you’d be right; yet Ryan’s world is the model that GQ sells to millions on a monthly basis – crisp suits, expensive hotels, big spender reward cards – and Ryan’s charisma and pop philosophy allows us to buy into it quickly. His life of airport-limbo is one of 50s glamour; cocktails and crooning music, ejecting delayed flights and sweaty queuing for an existence built upon the smiling efficiency of good business.
Scrapping much of the original novel’s story, the plot presents a lightly existentialist look at the validity of Ryan’s lifestyle through his two female companions. The enchanting Alex (Vera Farmiga), is a fellow frequent flyer whose casual relationship with Ryan seemingly confirms his jet-set lifestyle, whilst his begrudging protégé, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), in her sweetly naive belief in romance, provides a strong foil that, when coupled with Ryan’s unexpected feelings for Alex, begin to reveal the possible hollowness underneath his surface gloss.
Anna Kendrick successfully captures the youthful ambition of a graduate go-getter, trying to keep her head up against the quietly devastating nature of her job for the employees fired (well evinced through documentary-style montages), whilst Vera Farmiga’s Alex is, as she so aptly puts it, Ryan with a vagina, matching his own effortless cool with a disarming aloofness that, from their first scene together, makes for great chemistry. The clear star of the show however, is Clooney, who fits right into Ryan’s shoes – the magnetism of his Danny Ocean is allowed to flourish within a strong script that creates natural tension against his smiling rejection of emotional baggage.
Reitman, meanwhile, rightly seizes upon the opportunity to fuse the corporate tone of Thank You for Smoking with Juno’s squashy whimsy, resulting in a visual style that mirrors Ryan’s own awakening emotion; what begins with relentless fast-cuts, sweeping pans and tight angles steadily softens into the shaky camera work and jerking zoom of amateur video, the visuals themselves gaining a sense of humanity as the movie progresses. Ryan’s speech on the need to remove yourself of your ‘luggage’ in order to live sounds increasingly false in its played out repetitions throughout the movie, the central conceit – the need for relationships in order to gain a fulfilled life – given the finishing touch with a soundtrack that swings from Rolfe Kent’s upbeat orchestral pieces to the sombre introspection of Elliot Smith.
Without giving too much away, the Juno haters needn’t fear too much over any excessive mushiness in Up in the Air – whilst the film goes through its occasional lull, there is no denying the polish of the finished product and the magnetic energy of its leads – there is a reason this film has drawn in Golden Globes and significant Oscar hype. You will, if nothing else, be entertained.
4 stars
