TIFF 09: UP IN THE AIR Review
George Clooney has come full circle in his stardom. Getting a romantic and engaging 'time-out' with Jennifer Lopez after she blows off a couple of traveling corporate types flirting in the lounge, his character in the latest Jason Reitman comedy, Ryan Bingham, is exactly one of those transient and boring corporate drones. Being George Clooney (particularly in a suit) he still manages to find a willing and no-strings-attached lady friend in the gorgeous and mature Vera Farmiga. But I am getting ahead of myself here, Ryan makes a living downsizing employees for corporations too timid (for personal or legal reasons) of doing the dirty work of parceling out their own involuntary severance packages. This means a lot of time on the road between auto companies and banking institutions, you know the places hit the hardest in late 2008.
Bingham has also downsized his own life, whether because of the emotional toll his job takes (albeit he is damn good at it), or for other less clear reasons, to become the self-described "wealthiest homeless man in America." No long term relationships and little connection with his extended family, he is happy to only spend a small fraction of the year in his tiny barely adorned apartment. Instead his existence is all transience and freedom; in hotel suites, courtesy lounges and other travel holding-zones across America. All the while collecting his coveted loyalty points. Lots and lots of loyalty points. It is not the money or the ability to travel around the world several times on his accumulated tally, it is the status of the thing. He is proud and confident to skip airport and check-in, to board and exit airports in the most efficient manner possible rewarded by his status, but also has the goal of hitting a point total that earns him a recognition only 7 other people have achieved in their lifetime ("less than have walked on the moon") and he is well under 50.
Much like his life, his baggage is the smallest of carry on bags packed efficiently with neat, anonymous suits and toiletries. Rolling smoothly along from town to town he also gives paid talks on how to be the most efficient business traveler, using an empty backpack as a metaphor for mobility and movement as a metaphor for life. Material things like a house or a car weigh you down, and relationships are the heaviest, he pontificates to the other road warriors. The philosophy he spouts in his ballroom seminars is practically a pithy and institutionalized version of Tyler Durden's 20th century 'freedom-from-stuff monologues' in Fight Club. Ironic that Bingham (the shiny mirror image of ragged Durden) is often wearing that cornflower blue tie to match his pressed suits. Philosophy is so malleable these days.
His job is to set people adrift from their own lives, and make them feel better about circumstances beyond their control. The irony (and wit) of the film is that he too is about to be set adrift. His job (and quest for travel points) is about obsolete (downsized, if you will) as a pretty, bright young thing (Rocket Scientist's Anna Kendrick) sells his boss on firing people via a screen-to-screen set-up over the Internet. It is quite depressing to see people lose their jobs, visualized in a serious of snappy vignettes (cameos from J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis are superb) and a testament to the script and the direction that this is indeed charming and funny to watch. Amusing that the snake-eating-its-own-tail (Enron, sub-prime lenders) needs to downsize the downsizers and this enabled by someone too young to know anything of life. More interested in realizing career and relationship goals (right down to the brand of car and khakis on her husband) to factor in the humanity of firing a career employee without even a face to face. Clooney convinces his boss to let him show her the ropes to improve her system. This will hopefully show the futility (and fundamental lack of dignity) of the new system and earn himself a few more miles, while enabling him a few more sexy trysts with fellow road-warrior (and aggressively anti-commitment). It is a balance of road movie and home-movie when eventually Clooneys family life via his niece's wedding, begins to intrude and put his fast moving for the sake of moving life into some perspective. Up in The Air has a knock out of a script, with lots of twists and turns that completely defy any of the genres (the road movie, the romantic comedy, the fish-out-of-water comedy) that it effortlessly blends.
Perhaps the most timely movie for the left and right coasts of America at the moment, Up in the Air, manages the rare balancing act of making immediate, up-to-the-minute tragedy both warm and funny. But there is much more on the films plate than simply laughing-to-prevent-from-crying at the current state of America, the film delves into life philosophy, behavior etiquette in the modern world and simple human dignity in ways that only a good comedy can. Chaplin, Keaton, Capra, Wilder, even Woody Allen all have excelled in humourous filmmaking that really looks the choices we have to continually make daily, both the big reaching ones, and the tiny minutiae, and how they intermingle in surprising ways. Jason Reitman has been rapidly preparing a spot at the table with his three feature that take compelling, almost universal subjects, and dissect them with intelligence, humour, good plotting and smart populist cinema. Almost anyone living in the city or the suburbs in a first-world country, particularly the United States, today will have something to relate to in this film.
Never maudlin, quirky or sentimental (Juno strayed into this territory a number of times), Reitman has a very clear-headed picture about manners and self-respect in the digital age. Break-ups via blackberry, firings by subcontracting or Skype, underline how the dodge of responsibility and accountability has been accelerated by convenient technologies. The movie isn't a plea for luddite living, but rather finding a way for humanity to overcome the shortcuts of technology. It is perhaps one of the few (and most timely) movies to come along on this subject. That Reitman can gracefully make this poignant and boisterously funny is why in Hollywood or in indie-land he is certainly going places.
[Is this the best adult comedy of 2009? Well that depends on the much lauded Coen's A Serious Man (alas I missed at tiff); a film that is going to have to be at the top of the brother's game to best this.]
