Week 12

What a great movie which truly deserved an Oscar. Up in the Air's central character is Ryan Bingham, a traveler extraordinaire, who takes pleasure in raking up frequent flyer miles and traveling across the country. The plot involves Bingham meeting a woman, an expert traveler like himself (think of me like yourself with a vagina Bingham is told), and movies usually focused on life changing moments they are, we witness Bingham wanting to change his life and have a long term relationship with a woman. The fact that the culture code for women in US are MEN'S SALVATION is certainly in play here - but we are witnessing a story beyond this code, a universal statement; UIA could actually be seen as a documentary on modern [American] life.

I watched interviews given by director Jason Reitman on this movie trying to get hints on what he was trying to say; some soundbites I got were "I like to put open-minded people in close-minded situations" and "people form attachements with people they know nothing about [as in Bingham relating to stewardeses, and people getting attached to Twitter etc]". He also adds that audiences who watched UIA are split in two camps; there doesn't seem to be a broad agreement on what the movie is about.

And that is perfectly fine. A good movie is like a mathematical equation. A mathematical equation doesn't say any one thing either - it is simply a relationship between various variables. You can make it say one thing by arranging them to have one variable on one side (you might fail of course if they are nonlinear, which is half the fun, in any case), but beyond this, all you have is a web of attachements.

UIA certainly succeeds doing this. By following Reitman's technique, the movie ends up saying a lot about life modern life; director might not realize what he has said, but it resonates with the pschye. Naturally it falls upon careful analysts, critiques to dissect what has been said.

To me, UIA is a broad statement on how modernity is totallly broken in guiding people and providing a reliable structure in life. People might hide from this fact by forming certain routines, way of coping, but the moment they step out of that routine, they are clobbered. Bingham is the perfect example of this - the man knows how to fly. The man knows how to do is job, which by the way, is one of the worst white collor jobs you can ever imagine having. He fires people for a living. But Bingham is so good he is successful at this job.. The fact that George Clooney was chosen for this part is no coincidence. We are not talking about any actor here. It's George Fucking Clooney - one of the main leading man in Holywood, the Ocean's 11, 12, 13 Clooney, the man who comes in and takes care of everything, the cavalry. I mean, we expect him to handle life right?

Wrong. Therein lies the message of the movie. Sh.t is f..cked up and even George Clooney cannot handle it. It doesn't stop with Clooney's character either. We see it in Vera Farmiga's character too. It was really funny that at one point Farmiga is blamed by the younger actress to have become "an extreme feminist" or something like that, by having turned into a female Bingham, having no family etc. But later in the movie, we find out she does have a family, is a mom, so she managed to be female Bingham and form a family (so it's like take that you little biatch). An example of close mindedness I suppose, but you see? Everyone in the movie exceled with what life threw at them - but even that was not enough.

All of this leads up to an epic ending; after Bingham realizes Farmigga is married and he tries to get back to his old life, what we see on screen is a broken man and at that point we understand that sh.t is just too f.cked up to be even managed by George Clooney. Our hero has fallen.

Viewed in this lense, the name Up in the Air is perfect sense. What is up in the air?

Sadly, our lives are.