Day 14
Film 14
I have wanted to see this film ever since I saw the trailer. The more I heard about it, from reviews to the many awards it has already received, the more I wanted to see Up in the Air. I have yet to be disappointed by Reitman as Thank You For Smoking is one of my favorite re watchable films, and when I saw Juno I was just blown away.
Up in the Air is a spectacular piece of storytelling. It is well paced, the characters are memorable and very well flushed out, and on top of it all it has all of these juicy other layers to it that allow for a crazy English major like me just fall in love with it. Reitman uses his directorial powers with meticulous care. It makes you laugh at the same time breaking your heart. It is a beautiful, albeit understated (unlike the other Oscar contender Avatar), film. See it. See it now!
Up in the Air follows the life of a talented professional down sizer, as he learns who his family is and what he values most. Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, is at the start a sad lonely man living in denial, using his job and his 9 million plus air miles to hide from it all. He does not know the people he fires, he just does it anyway because that is his job. He is detached and alone with a job that demands humanity. Bingham's humanity was lost long ago, and one of the motifs in the film is this professional humanity that is very personal for one person and just routine for another. This is highlighted in Bingham's catchphrase, something along the lines of "every great man is sat where you are sitting right now," downsizing with people behind computers, break ups via telephones and the notion that a flowchart can outline the perfect course of actions for any turn of events inside the firing room.
The interesting thing with Up in the Air, which is chocked full of these images of empty office buildings and broken soon to be unemployed people, is that it is hopeful. Bingham assumes the role of savior instead of destroyer, even if it is just part of a well practiced speech. He gives most of them hope, one of the more powerful scenes involves Bingham letting someone go and halfway through the argument asks his current victim "You want your children's respect?" The scene goes on as Bingham explains that his children do not respect him, they respect athletes because they followed their dreams. A desk job was not his dream and the two minutes inside the firing room changed the man's life. There are at times when Bingham seems more like a traveling preacher than a professional down sizer. He travels the world alone, with nothing tying him down, his only god the airlines. He hands out books that have all of the answers anyone would need, something that could be a metaphor for the bible.
There are so many other angles I could take for this film. It really is a work of art and I would recommend it to anyone because I was blown away by this movie. I want to see it again. I want to tear it apart and piece it back together. It is just that good.
No comments:
Post a Comment