traveler without a backpack
by Douglas Messerli
Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner
(screenplay, based on a novel by Walter Kirn) Jason Reitman (director) Up in the Air / 2009
One of the reasons that many people
do not like to travel by air these days is the utter impersonality of the trip:
the blandly imposing air terminals filled with rushing figures who are herded
into lines where they are half undressed and released into the hands of
mechanically-smiling stewardesses who hurry them into cramped little spaces
where they are discouraged from moving until they reach their destination. Even
assembly-line workers might experience more variance. Yet this anonymous world
is just what the hero of the dark comedy Up
in the Air desires. As Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is described by
several women in this film, he is a "man-child" with a phobia for
interpersonal relationships. Marriage is clearly not for him. His big goal in
life is flying enough miles to receive American Airlines' Ten Million-miler
Executive Titanium card. At occasional motivational speeches Ryan teaches
people how to travel light, to unload their backpacks, not simply of personal
belongings, including their houses and cars, but to free themselves of friends,
family, even their husbands and wives:
The slower we move the
faster we die. Make no mistake, moving
is living. Some animals
were meant to carry each other to live
symbiotically over a
lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans.
We are not swans. We are
sharks.
As a hollow man, Ryan has, perhaps, the perfect job: he and the company
for which he works fire employees for "for bosses too cowardly to do it
themselves." Day after day, he destroys people's lives without giving it a
thought.
Into this perfectly empty world comes a fellow-shark, the beautiful,
witty, and wise Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) who seemingly shares the same
purposeless passions of Ryan. A minute or two after meeting in an airport bar,
they are slapping down airline, hotel, and car rental cards, comparing brands
and privileges. The size of Ryan's annual airline miles is quickly turned into
a sexual pun, and two rush off to bed with, evidently, several successful rolls
in the hay. They seem perfect for one another, clicking open their computer
itineraries to determine where and when they can next meet.
Back at the Omaha homebase Integrated Strategic Management has just
hired a young Cornell graduate, Natalie Kenner (Anna Kendrick) who convinces
her boss that a less costly and more effective way to lay-off the thousands of
employees they process each year is to use the internet. For Ryan, of course,
this is not only a major job change but a life change, one, we fear, he cannot
manage. He convinces his boss and the inexperienced Natalie that before they
transfer to the new system she needs to actually know what it is they do, in
other words, how to manage people
Suddenly the film transforms from a dark statement about a hollow man,
to a comic road film, as Ryan takes to the air with his new trainee who not
only has no clue of what she is about to encounter but cannot even pack lightly
for the trip. The experienced Ryan empties her suitcase as easily as he has his
motivational backpacks, but he has a harder time in convincing this eager,
highly committed young girl that his life has meaning.
The process of education is more than comic, however, as we gradually
come to perceive that there is some kindness and even purpose in Ryan's
man-on-man firings. At one point when an employee just fired painfully asks how
will he be able to care for his children, Ryan answers that he should seek a job doing what he truly
wants to do, become a chef for which, according to his resume, he had
originally trained. Others are encouraged to see their lay-offs as new
opportunities. The dozens of firings we witness are even more difficult to
watch when one knows that many of the people were actually real workers only
recently laid-off because of our current economy.
Natalie's attempt at firing is less successful, as an older black woman,
upon the young girl's offer of the severance packet, responds that she knows
what she'll be doing; "I'm planning on jumping off a bridge near my
house."
No matter how distressful their encounters are, however, it becomes
clear that real human beings are better bearers of bad news than machines. When
Natalie finds out that her boyfriend has left her it is through a text message,
to which Ryan quips "It's like being fired over a computer."
The next day, however, teacher and student are ordered to test out the
screen method. A beefy Detroit worker breaks down into tears upon hearing the
news, and Natalie is forced to firmly send him on his way. As we watch him
leave a nearby room and walk down a hall beside them, we witness her turning
away so as not to be seen. What was previously done openly and honestly is now
something from which she must hide. Summoned to return to Omaha, the two fly
off to continue their work via computer.
The experience of working with someone and the growing pleasure of being
with Alex has somehow changed Ryan while altering the audience's perception of
him. He suddenly switches his plans, rushing off to his younger sister's
wedding in Wisconsin, taking Alex along for the ride.
When on the day of the wedding the young groom suddenly gets cold feet,
Ryan is enlisted to talk him into continuing with the affair, a bit like asking
an undertaker to help with a childbirth. Yet the brother who has steered clear
of his sisters for most of his life, comes through, convincing the young man
that life is only meaningful when it is shared with someone else. The wedding
continues with a growing sense of romance developing between Alex and a now more
vulnerable Ryan. This time when Alex leaves him on her way to Chicago, we can
sense, for the first time, his utter loneliness.
Back in Omaha the computers are up and running, workers using their
peers to test the new system. Again Ryan bolts, this time hurrying off to
Chicago. The formerly hollow man is nearly desperate, we sense, to fill up his
life, to entangle himself with everything he has formerly rejected. The woman
who comes to door is called from within by a child and a husband. Alex's
backpack is already too full for her to share anything more than one night
stands.
A lawsuit has just been filed. The black woman who threatened suicide
has jumped from the bridge and died. Nathalie herself is fired, the computer
program cancelled. Ryan is ordered back into the air, a man free to continue
his job moving from city to city without even having to come up for air. But
the man sitting in first class—whom, it is suddenly announced, has just flown
enough miles to receive the 7th American Airlines' Ten-Million Miles Card—is
someone else, a man with a heavy heart. "The stars will wheel forth from
their daytime hiding places; and one of those lights, slightly brighter than
the rest, will be my wingtip passing over," muses Ryan in the closing
monologue. For him moving has, at last, become living, while he has become one
with his vehicle of motion.
Los Angeles, December 21, 2009
Reprinted from Nth Position [England] (January 2009) and Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer,
2012).
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