The Pathos and Humor of Up in the Air

The movie, Up in the Air, has a consistent message in its ironic, playful, and as an arbiter and ultimate take on our collective plight as a nation in its plot. It’s that our destiny is little removed from the emotional chaos of ourselves.

George Clooney, playing the character, Ryan Bingham, works for a company that’s a professional corporate “firing” firm, and he travels around the country for his boss–played by Jason Bateman, as the character, Craig Gregory–to humanize the depersonalization of mass layoffs, one worker by one worker at a time.

At first our attention is seized, then we become de-sensitized to the terminated workers responses to the news that they’ve been fired, which include familiar refrains such as how they’ll survive, how they’ll pay the bills, all the way to how many years they’ve put into working for “the company.”

Ultimately their collective plights are for naught, as Clooney’s, Ryan Bingham, possess’ all the experience of the messenger of doom, to deftly and swiftly serve up and sever their employment to each and every one of the tens of thousands of workers, he fires with niceties such as “consider this as your moment to find yourself,” and other insipid but real life responses one would expect from the corporate machine.

Bingham’s boss, Bateman’s character, Craig Gregory– efficiently corralled into being part-businessman, and part friend to Clooney– enables the viewer to become fairly immune to what Clooney’s character does for a living. It’s all a giant pot of witch’s brew, served up warm and funny.

Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham, is the ultimate loner and escape artist—but uses airports and flying as his means and ways to avoid human contact and relationships. To be frank, it’s not far removed from reality for a lot of people. Granted, when a new MBA type wants to “re-engineer” the “process,” of having Clooney’s character, Bingham and the firm’s way of firing people by automating it “virtually” by computer—we know that that process is doomed, as is the new in-your-face career woman, who joined the company as an efficiency expert

Also doomed is Clooney’s turn-a-bout liaison’s with a fellow traveler, to the all but predictable burn-out and emotional toll on the young corporate protégée who doesn’t understand that when technology meets human being, the two are not meant to communicate on an intimate level.

Anna Kendrick, who plays Bingham’s colleague Natalie — is smart but not smart enough. Although she quickly seizes upon Mr. Clooney’s idiosyncratic escapism, for the fast track corporate lioness, her mind is never far from her heart, (although she doesn’t know or realize it until it’s too late), as she holds court with Clooney until she understands that she’s not cut out for this job. We watch blithely, Clooney’s emotional detachment, and Natalie’s rather pedantic views on life as a young career woman.

We come to learn that although she graduated at a leading university at the top of her class, she came to the company’s headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, because she “was just following a boy.”

The movie’s subtext of America as the land of collapsing economic dreams; relationships are temporary; and what one is not what one does—is smashed head-on with Clooney’s character, because he ultimately knows that he desires nothing more than what he’s doing, and the mythologies about who and what we are as a nation are easily tossed aside as Clooney understands, only too well.

Although along the way, he saves his sister’s marriage by taking wacky pictures for her and convincing her fiancé that cold feet on their wedding day would mean that he would remain lonely—an epic satire on his character—to the notion that the corporate woman with the fiery attitude is hell bent to incentive and improve the firing efficiency by technology is doomed to fail, because she will learn by flying around with Clooney’s character Bingham, that she’s not emotionally cut out for the world of corporate cut-throat layoffs.

The movie’s other subplot involves around Clooney’s female equivalent, the openly sexual and playful romantic relationship he has with Vera Farmiga, who plays Clooney’s female romantic lead character, Alex Goran. Alex is his “opposite but with a vagina,” is because she’s always traveling too. They’re the Yin and Yin of detached trysts which are only planned around both of their traveling schedules.

Predictably, the only time Clooney lets his character’s emotions get the better of him is when he travels to Chicago to see if Farmiga’s character, Alex, wants a deeper relationship with him, only to find out that she’s married in her “real life,”–and Clooney’s character, Bingham is her play life. Frankly, this twist was a dead give-a-way, as the viewer should have expected–and based on how the script was written–that each one of the characters were way too set in their ways to ever change.

But Clooney is no sap, and a quick study in human emotions. He picks himself up no matter whatever comes flying down the pike his way—no pun intended—and continues to know what makes him tick.

It’s being “Up in the Air,” and receiving his Ten Million Miles flying award, of which he’ll keep doing.