Jason Reitman’s follow-up to the much-loved Juno is another bittersweet film, but one much less arch and more true to life. Up in the Air tells the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a man with one of the worst jobs you can imagine – he is hired by companies to fire people for them. Yet he loves his job because it allows him to travel across America, collecting airmiles and avoiding any meaningful relationships with others. When he finds his perfect mate (Vera Farmiga), and his own job is threatened by a fresh-faced graduate (Anna Kendrick) and her downsizing plans, Ryan starts to evaluate his life.
Clooney makes Ryan suave and sophisticated (let’s face it, it is hard for Clooney to be anything else), but at the same time he is one of the saddest characters to have ever been put on celluloid. Estranged from his family, he is someone with no home and no love who preaches this as a successful way to live at self-help conferences. It would have been easy for him to be incredibly unlikeable, like Tom Cruise in Magnolia, but the way he carries out his despicable job with such decency means you can see there’s a heart of gold in there somewhere.
Although Clooney’s performance is excellent, the two women are outstanding. Kendrick’s character is so realistic, and not the sort of female character you often see on screen. Bright and ambitious, her relentlessly business-like surface hides a naive young woman who is very hard on herself. Farmiga plays an older career woman who knows what she wants and goes out and gets it. The character’s relationship with Ryan feels very real, making this film anything but a fairytale romance. These are two star-making performances from actresses who haven’t been given a chance to shine before (they were last in the Twilight saga and The Orphan respectively).
The screenplay, based on the novel by Walter Kirn, is funny and touching in equal measure. This is perhaps the first movie to deal with the current recession, and one of the few to examine corporate America and business culture. Reitman uses real people who have lost their jobs to talk about what it feels like to be made redundant, which is heartbreaking and brings a universality to the film that would otherwise be missing. Up in the Air is a wonderful character study and truly a film for our times.
