Ryan Bingham is a hatchet man. The human resources incarnation of Death. He’s the man who gets called in to inform an employee that his or her position within a company no longer exists. But – credit the finely-tuned confluence of script, direction and George Clooney – he is certainly not a sadist. When he compares his job as a corporate downsizer, or career transition counselor, to that of a ferryman shuttling lost souls through limbo until they can see that first glimmer of hope, he is perfectly serious. With unflappable, professional, detached empathy, he specializes in talking people down from the ledge that comes with being fired.
Yet in a film director Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You for Not Smoking) describes as the “examination of a philosophy,” the character is ultimately defined by the metaphor of an empty backpack, discussed by Bingham in motivational seminars, more so than the absence of vicious Dilbertian satire. Obsessed with collecting frequent flyer miles, Bingham is a nomad whose homes lie in lounges and airport hubs across the country. The rituals of travel – packing luggage, quickly clearing security, renting cars – hold more meaning than both his nondescript, bare apartment in Omaha, Nebraska, or his corporate head office. And when challenged about lacking roots of a human kind – Bingham scarcely can be bothered to participate in his family’s lives – he proves himself a sophist of the highest caliber. Lonely? He is surrounded by people. No one to talk to? Conversations are always a bar stool away. In the backpack of his life, he travels light so he can travel freely, unburdened by the messy, complicated dramas of romantic and familial relationships. Yet he is not a recluse self-barricaded in a cave.
Reitman wrote the role of Bingham expressly for George Clooney, taking off from Walter Kirn’s novel and going in his own direction. The choice proves inspired, since few actors can hint at vulnerability beneath an armor of confidence charm with Clooney’s ease. Clooney sells Bingham’s philosophy and lifestyle, in other words, and makes a very persuasive case…yet it is entirely plausible when the armor cracks and we are validated through our own personal feeling that there is something wrong with an empty backpack even if we can’t immediately argue against it.
Bingham, however, isn’t all about Clooney. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a cast to develop a character. The team effort comes by way of Vera Farmiga’s formidable Alex Goran, a female counterpart to Bingham who doesn’t fire people for a living but shares his wanderlust, and Anna Kendrick’s smart but naïve Cornell graduate Natalie Keener, the overachiever who is paired with a very reluctant Bingham on a tour of corporate downsizing across the country. Keener comes to contrast with the lone wolf by virtue of her traditional views on the value and meaning of love and human connection, an ironic perspective given her development of a video-conferencing system to remotely fire people – a system that renders roaming agents like Bingham unnecessary. Forget clichéd Hollywood romance, however – the platonic relationship provokes a thaw in Bingham as the close proximity forces each to confront the other as more than transient connections. It is through Goran, however, that Bingham’s philosophy is made to crack. How it all plays out is funny, tragic, moving, thought-provoking; proof that the title is apt both literally and figuratively.
It would be tempting to link the story’s roots in corporate downsizing to the economic calamities that are fast becoming this decade’s zeitgeist. A scene between Clooney and J.K. Simmons, as one of those lost souls in need of ferrying, reinforces the uncertainties and opportunities that come with being laid off. Yet in the end, Up in the Air is more akin to Gore Verbinski’s underappreciated, and bleaker, character study The Weather Man than a Capraesque paean to the working man’s trouble. Bingham’s job, provocative as it is, serves as a means to an end. Alienation, the struggle towards and away from meaningful human contact – these are the human conditions, delivered with wry insight and certain tender sensitivities that make the film take flight.
Entertainment: ** (out of two)
Craft: ** (out of two) Gold Star Recommendation!
Up in the Air. Directed by Jason Reitman. Written by Reitman and Sheldon Turner. Based on the novel by Walter Kirn. Starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick and Jason Bateman. 109 minutes. Rated R (for for language and some sexual content).
Frédérik invites you to discuss Up in the Air at his blog, www.inkandashes.net