Up In The Air

Consider it another winner for Director Jason Reitman – Up In The Air is a quirky, humorous film with a message. No wonder there have been multiple wins and multiple nominations for both movie and actors – finally, a  different story that hasn’t been told before.

George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, middle manager at a company that contracts out its workers to do the difficult job of firing employees. One can assume that letting an employee go after several years of service would be difficult because a professional relationship would have been built and the process of ending that relationship would be a personal and emotional one. It makes sense that an outside firm could do the job without the emotional side effects, so the industry is booming.

There are so many wonderful elements to this story. Reitman deserves enormous accolades for really digging into the subject of human connection as it exists in today’s highly technological culture. As Bingham travels the country for his job, he does so with an almost effortless attention to detachment from anything human. He has mastered the art of airport security screening, he has amassed huge quantities of travel rewards – including nearing his ten millionth mile with American Airlines. On the flip side, he has no relationship with his family, has no friends, and can’t sustain a romantic relationship.

When an invitation to his sister’s wedding arrives, Bingham is forced to make a choice to enter the world of human contact or not. His journey is a thoughtful, and humorous look into today’s culture. There is a lot to examine on screen that reflects our own lives and for this, it is a very thought provoking film.

The Rave Review loved the story, though it was surprisingly serious underneath the witty dialogue. Anna Kendrick plays Cornell graduate Natalie Keener who brings another strange layer of human connection to the story as she introduces the firm to the concept of video dismissal as a means of detaching even further from the emotional side of dismissing an employee.