Up In The Air: Review

"Up In The Air" is about "Ryan Bingham" (George Clooney) who is a man hired to travel around the country to failing businesses and fire their employees when the bosses and CEOs are afraid to do it themselves. "Natalie Keener" (Anna Kendrick) is a fresh-out-of-school twenty-something who believes in pie-charts, graphs and is assigned to tag along on Bingham's travels in order to understand the business better. "Alex Goan" (Vera Fermiga) is a woman who Bingham meets and makes him think in terms of whether or not relationships really mean anything at all.

When I first saw the preview for "Up In The Air" was when I went to see "Precious" a few months ago. I had some reservations about it. I'm familiar with Jason Reitman's work - I loved "Thank You For Smoking" but I didn't catch onto the "Juno" craze as everybody else seemed to do. Lastly, I thought it looked kind of boring.

However, "Up In The Air" really surprised me. I thought it was going to be Hollywood preachy about The New Depression but it wasn't. I can see why it's getting the buzz it deserves because I don't think even Hollywood could escape from making this film real and topical. In fact, I do believe somewhere I read they had to change the some of the film's material from being satirical to being more truthful because the economy crashed in the middle of production.

I loved how George Clooney's character was an archtype and a metaphor at the same time. He represents so many people people who's lives are based on their "points" whether it be their credit score or frequent flier miles. He's never grounded only for more than a few days otherwise, he's up in the air and leads a very isolated and sad life. It was sad to see him in his apartment and think that if he would die to tomorrow, it would be as if he didn't exist at all because of how nondescript and empty his apartment was - no trinkets, no photo albums, no collections, not even a favorite food (except for the hotel bottles of alcohol in the refrigerator).

Every character was unique and where they could have fallen into stereotypes and cliches, Jason Reitman's writing and direction revealed human truths about every one of them. I think a lot of young people who watch this film will relate to Anna Kendrick's character. I'm twenty-one and while I couldn't relate to some of the things she thought or did, I did relate to her strict discipline of deadlines and goals she has to set now while she's young.

This film has many layers. It's a film about The New Depression and in regards to how business has turned into something that isn't strictly personal but the contradictions it implies when taking away a person's lively hood. It's a film about the worth of relationships and how we conduct them moreover technology than we ever have before. It shows how we're constantly removing ourselves from each other and the question is, what is it for? What do we get from removing ourselves from each other? And I thought it was interesting in way it lead to how we've responded to technology so far. We use technology as a pathetic excuse in order to avoid face-to-face contact and what does this result to? The only redeemable quality we can have is in hoping that we realize what we're doing before it's too late. We also don't have any sense of etiquette to how to handle technology either. For instance, should being dumped or quitting a job over a text message be considered just as insensitive and inconsiderate as laying someone off over an I-Chat? I think we lack the recognition that with technology brings a lot more work and consideration than we ever thought it could.

It is a great film. One of the most topical and definitive films I've seen in a long time.

My Verdict: See it!