Review: Up in the Air (2009)

Released January 7, 2010

No film has better captured the confusion and alienation of the post Bush-era recession than Jason Reitman’s latest, a sly and poignant study of a man who goes everywhere and nowhere.

He is Ryan Bingham (George Clooney). You know the type. Smart suit, smooth talking, efficient but empty. He lives in an airport lounge, travelling across the country firing people for a living. Sometimes he gives motivational speeches, extolling the virtues of living an attachment free life. If the sum of your relationships and possessions were a backpack, he says, his would be empty. And he wants yours to be too.

But his boss (Jason Bateman) is about to take him off the road. He is to be replaced by a more efficient iPhone-generation firing system suggested by the ambitious but inexperienced Natalie (a wonderfully zestful Anna Kendrick). In a last ditch effort to maintain his lifestyle, Ryan takes Natalie on the road to show her what firing people is really like.

Bingham ends up learning as much from her as she does from him, though his real muse is the seductive Alex (Vera Farmiga, The Departed). With her he finds a kindred spirit, and for the first time considers whether there are things more important than his dream of obtaining 10 million frequent flyer miles.

The story could have easily slipped into romantic comedy clichés (and, despite its often profound subject matter, it is very funny), but Reitman, who also co-wrote the screenplay from Walter Kim’s novel, is too clever for that. Underneath the witty banter and screwball comedy sensibility, there’s a humbling and sad realization about life in the technological age. The reality is amplified by scenes involving real people describing their anguish, fear, and uncertainty following the widespread layoff of staff.

Clooney has never been better, still the smooth charmer he’s always been, and Farmiga and Kendrick are his match. Jason Reitman has already made the excellent Thankyou for Smoking and Juno. With Up in the Air he’s topped them both. A.O. Scott called it “a classic in the making”. He’s not wrong.