"Up in the Air" Release date 12/04/2009
January 18, 2010With 6 nominalizations at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, one prize taken home, and many other awards, “Up in the Air” is definitely a movie to take into consideration this year.
The movie, although based on a book written before the economical crysis, is one that sets it’s premises on a very up to date society. George Clooney is Ryan Bingham, a man that spent last year more then 200 days traveling, and who has a very interesting job: to fire people. He works at a company that does the dirty job for others in cases of massive lay offs and other situations like this.
Clooney makes an outstanding character out of Ryan managing to schetch his view of life rather easy to the viewers. He is one to believe, that “the slower you move, the faster you die” and tryes not to attach himself of anything, human or not, considering that in the end we all end up in the same place, alone. His main goal is to be seventh person to get 10 million miles on his fidelity card with the airline he’s traveling with. He spends his whole life in aiports, hotels, rented cars and, of course, “Up in the Air”.
Things change when Ryan meets two women. The first one is Alex, a business woman, that shares a similar life style to his. The second one is Natalie, a new comer in the firm he work for, a menace to his life/work style. Natalie tryes to implement a system in which all the lay offs are done online, with webcams and microphones, thus saving a lot of company money. In order to save what he believes in, and basically his life, he takes Natalie on journeys thru the country to see him at his work. In the meantime they meet with at Alex at different locations (it was the only way their relationship worked). It is obvious that the journey is life changing for Natalie, who matures along Ryan’s speeches, life experience, and pragmatism, but also for Clooney’s character who starts doubting that being all alone is the best thing. Things get really messy when Ryan takes Alex to his syster’s wedding (practically a stranger to him) when Ryan actually saves the marriage, understands that his life was empty and gets attached to Alex. Unfortunelly for him things don’t have a romantic happy ending, as Alex has a family and Ryan is just someone she enjoys being with on trips. “Up in the Air” ends it’s journey surprising Ryan with reaching his goal, getting 10 million miles on his card, but realizing that that doesn’t mean anything.
The movie is a comedy / drama that at the end of it makes you say: “What the fuck just happened?”. Clooney makes this complex hero seem so easy and every line, every clisee he says just seems to fit perfectly like you knew it from the begging. The pragmatic replies to Natalie’s juvenile yet very ambitious beliefes make you laugh every time, and his “light traveler’s” attitude is just delicious. On the other hand, the movie tries to present how people cope with getting layed off, and most importantly what are the real values in life, a heavy bag, or 10 million miles on a card?
“Up in the Air” is the kind of movie with a flat line, somehow predictable but is a very pleasant one, and doesn’t make you regret for a second seeing it. A word of warning for those who do not feel like watching something with meaning: “you will be bored”.
Even if you saw the movie you should check out “Up in the Air”s website as it’s really neet and the soundtrack is just delightful.
Also in order for you to understand better what I was talking about before with “light traveler” and heavy baggages check out the trailer bellow:
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