Up in the Air, dir. Jason Reitman (2009)

1.

There was a time when the kinesis depicted in Up in the Air was synonymous with rebellion. The life lead by Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) in the film is not so dissimilar from, say, the life of the unnamed protagonist in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up. Despite the necessary divergences, both signify the triumph of mobility. In Antonioni’s film, David Hemmings takes pleasure is his perpetual motion, rootlessness, and cruelty; his lack of relationships or even identity. Bingham is peripatetic in a more obvious sense: he movies through the gleaming, super-sanitary corridor of international travel and identical airport Hiltons; the film makes it painfully crystalline that this “lifestyle” has distanced him from everyone he knows. He takes an almost melancholy pride in the difficulty of his heatless job—travelling around the country to fire people. Despite the “miles” he’s so proud to have racked up—ten million by the end of the film—it would be fair to say that he hasn’t moved at all. The homogeneity of airports and hotels and the ubiquitous “lounge” ensures that all of Bingham’s movement is merely illusory. What Up in the Air signifies is the transformation of movement from an element of vibrant, youthful counterculture to a way of life for millions of corporate cogs.

2.

Despite its atmosphere of importance and pretentions to political filmmaking, Jason Reitman’s film is old news two-times over. By now we know that airports are not meant for those looking to stand still. Prefab environments designed to facilitate your movement ensure that any extended stay will be uncomfortable. Jacques Tati’s Playtime in a sense predicted this transformation of public space in 1967, and Steven Spielberg made sure to capitalize off of Tati’s intelligence and wit in The Terminal. Unlike those films, though, Reitman seems uninterested in film on its most basic level: the shot, the frame. Playtime and even The Terminal were full of visual punnery that took advantage of and wryly commented on the new kinds of spaces that were emerging in the second half of the twentieth century and the types of people they were creating. Every image in Up in the Air, though, is totally forgettable. The film is visually dominated by massive lettering advertizing Hilton and American Airlines. I’d be hard pressed to believe that neither company had a stake in a film that depicts them as consistent, convenient, clean, and without delays. And now that Reitman’s been nominated for a Best Director Golden Globe—with an Oscar nod soon to follow—it begs the question, why him?

3.

The film—which has more endings than the last Lord of the Rings movie—makes itself out to be a “movie of the moment,” described by Reitman as a topical piece featuring documentary footage of real people who’ve been fired sharing their feelings about the global recession and how it has impacted them. One of the film’s many endings takes place in Detroit, one of the most hardly-hit cities in America. It feels almost triumphant: we get to watch as an unknown, low-level Detroit suit gets canned and cries. In the process, our empathy rises to the fore. Maybe we shed a tear or two. And we get to leave the theatre knowing we’ve done good by everyone who lost a job in the “economic crisis.” For that, I can see why the Hollywood Foreign Press would reward Reitman.