The more I thought about Up in the Air
George Clooney – who seems to be morphing into Cary Grant as he ages – plays Ryan Bingham, a consultant who flies around the country and fires (or, really, lays off) employees whose bosses are too cowardly to do it themselves. He’s also a straight-up mileage whore who has set a life goal of becoming the seventh flier ever to reach ten million mileages in American Airlines’ AAdvantage program. (The film doubles as an extended infomercial for American, Hilton Hotels, and Hertz.) And Ryan moonlights as a hired motivational speaker, praising a life of independence from both physical possessions and interpersonal relationships. Then, of course, he meets the perfect woman and has to change his entire philosophy, all while toting around an overconfident and highly naïve 23-year-old Cornell grad (love the stereotyping of the Ivy Leaguers – remember, kids, it’s bad to be smart!) while they teach each other Big Important Lessons about life and love and psychology.
Clooney, Anna Kendrick (as the Cornell grad, Natalie), and Vera Farmiga (as Ms. Perfect) are all superb, extremely convincing even when their roles turn out to be paper-thin (Kendrick’s) or internally contradictory (the other two). There’s an effortless chemistry between Clooney and Farmiga that makes his transition from one-night-stand to budding romance not just believable but almost invisible – before you know it, he’s falling for her, even though we’re missing a bunch of steps in the story. You might watch the film just to see these three actors, all nominated for Academy Awards for their performances, do their thing, but I think you’ll want to punch the screen before it’s over.
And the reasons are many. One is that we never learn why Ryan is so afraid of commitments. He came from small-town Wisconsin, but this isn’t the budding urbanite in search of culture beyond his homogenous, provincial upbringing. His sisters are his only family, and he’s mostly abandoned them until one of them gets married, but there’s no obvious reason why – both characters, in bit parts, are sweet and care for him even though they don’t seem to have much in common. Another is that Natalie ends up something of a prop for Ryan to play off rather than a fully-developed character in her own right – she changes as the plot needs her to change.
(This movie was, on some level, ruined for me beforehand by Will Leitch. Will’s become my go-to movie reviewer for after I’ve seen a film, because I find his observations are often so spot-on that they influence my interpretation of the movie. He nailed Up in the Air, especially on the glaring inconsistencies in the script, although I think he went easy on the plot twist, which I’ll get to in a moment. But you’ll notice I’m saying a lot of the things he said, and I’m sure that’s not an accident: He set me up. So now I read him after I’ve seen a movie and want an expert’s opinion, using Roger Ebert as my go-to guy before I choose to see a film.)
That plot twist – big spoiler alert here – is a killer, though. Alex (Farmiga, who by the way looks like what I expected Claire Forlani to look like at this age) is Ryan’s female analogue, another road warrior looking for NSA sex in high-end Hiltons but not much more than that, until the two start meeting up a little more often and then spend more quality time together at a conference, where he asks her to be his date for his sister’s wedding, to which she agrees without much debate. There they have the classic Hollywood falling-in-love weekend, and you might think they’re headed for happily ever after … until he surprises her at her house in Chicago, only to discover she has a husband and two kids, after which she berates him as if it’s his fault that she hid this significant life detail. (“I’m a grown-up.” No, sister, you’re a raging narcissist, and possibly a sociopath as well.) Alex is two completely different characters that have virtually no crossover, and the idea of this independent, too-perfect paramour also being a loving mom who also is willing to abandon her kids for a romantic weekend with the guy with whom she says she only wants casual sex is such a farce that it blew up the whole movie and made me realize how badly I’d been bamboozled by everything that had come before it.
I will give Up in the Air credit for one thing, however: Someone involved in writing the story at least grasped the world of frequent flyer/guest point accumulation. Ryan is absurd in that regard, and his underlying motivation is murky, but the absurdity of the portrayal is the source of its humor. Either you’ve been a heavy traveler and understand using every trick possible to max out your points, or you know someone who has. I’ve never traveled as much as Ryan has – I’ve never been above the first level of “elite” status on any airline – but I do it enough to make me a mileage junkie, with affiliated credit cards and one eye always on promotions that might boost my miles or bump me up in status. That nod to people who fly as part of their jobs was a cute touch – but it added virtually nothing to the strange, unfinished plot about Ryan Bingham’s life choices, and when Sam Elliott makes his Coen-esque cameo as the pilot on the flight where Ryan reaches the ten million mile threshold, it’s like we’ve been airlifted into a separate film entirely. The worthwhile parts of Up in the Air could have been aired on a flight from Chicago to Milwaukee, but I like to get a little farther off the ground than that.
Thank you for this. I nearly lost faith in humanity listening to people tell me how good of a movie this was, then again it’s the same sort of people that praise the Jersey Shore and pitcher wins as a viable stat. The casting choices and plot leaps were completely unbelievable and out of place. Yes Vera Farmiga is a solid-enough actress, but really… SHE is the one to instantly change George Clooney without any semblance of reasoning or rationale on his end? Ok… and putting Brian Bocock on the Royals would turn them into a title contender. The inconsistencies were overwhelmingly abundant and at one point I asked my wife if this was an extended commercial for American and Hilton; sadly it wasn’t. …Manuscripts don’t burn, but I wish they would’ve made an exception for this one.
I mostly agree with your take on what I’d call a very average movie, except for one point.
There was no stereotyping of Ivy Leaguers, or any subtext that it is bad to be smart, educated or a young overachiever in the portrayal of Anna Kendrick’s character. She was portrayed as naive– as most recend graduates are, whether from the Ivy League or otherwise. But she was also portrayed as capable, smart, likable, and overall, entirely sympathetic– more so than any other character in the movie, actually.
This is a similar mentality I often see among sabermetrically inclined baseball writers, yourself included. Whatever real or imagined instance suffered of being branded as a nerds or a smart kid, or in the case of baseball writing, someone who “never played the game,” manifests as a hyper-sensitivity to anything remotely resembling those memories.
Your reading of Kendrick’s character as being a symbol of some notion that it’s bad to be smart simply isn’t there. It reminds me of the way stat heads react to every fair-minded criticism (or even curiosity-based question) of xFIP as being indecipherable from a Joe Morgan-esque claim that if you’ve never played baseball, you can’t refute his take on slow-but-productive players clogging up the bases. You’re seeing something that isn’t there, based entirely on sensitivity.
Varmiga’s character is a farce? Yeah, I bet there’s never been a business person on the road who hid the fact that they were married and had kids from a lover who thought they were the perfect man/woman. Or someone who had an affair with a person who seems perfect and turns out to be a completely different person. How unrealistic!
Agree that this movie was overrated, though I’m not sure I’d take it to the woodshed quite as severely as you just did. The plot twist stunk out loud though, I don’t think there can be any debate about that. And I found the resolution (if you want to call it that) a letdown.
The work of the three lead actors was enough to put me over the hump, and I still consider it to be at least enjoyable. Clooney resonates as strongly as ever on-screen, and at this point I really can’t imagine a scenario where a movie of his falls flat with the audience.
The one thing I will strongly disagree with you on though is the portrayal of Kendrick’s character Natalie. I don’t think the message is that its bad to be smart so much as it is that the insufferable young know-it-alls can only learn so much in college, and that just because you have a degree (even from an Ivy!) does not mean your education is complete. I’ve seen more than my share of Ivy grads thinking that the day they leave school they are smarter than an entire industry, and there is no way to tell them otherwise. The only way I’ve ever seen any of them learn is to fall flat on their face.
Anyway, enough of that rant,
The plot twist ruined it for me, too. I could not retroactively buy her behavior, in particular the idea of her running off with him for a full weekend. If she was really just this person who wanted some NSA sex but was interested in preserving her family at all costs, the idea that she’d let things go that far was utterly preposterous to me. Plus turning a likable character into the effective villain of the piece that quickly just took the whole film’s knees out.
Jim: it’s not her duplicity toward Ryan that bothered me, but the abandonment of kids she later claims to love (or at least wants to protect) for a romantic weekend with him – with absolutely no prior indication that she had this split personality.
As for Natalie, I’m not quite so personally sensitive as a few of you folks seem to think, although I view anti-intellectualism with disdain simply because of how it has infected our society and may affect our economy and our health going forward. That said, I disagree on her character overall: she’s not well-formed, she’s all over the place. First she’s the snot-nosed (Leitch’s term for her) Ivy Leaguer who needs her comeuppance. Then she’s the fragile loud-crying teenager in a business suit. Later she’s the psychologist on the pier when Ryan needs a correction. At the end, she responds to a totally foreseeable tragedy by running away from a job to which she had previously been fully dedicated. She inspires pity at several points, but certainly not sympathy, because of how she was written. That she’s likable at all is a credit to Kendrick.
You could be a representative of a worse stereotype…like Southerners. Want an idiot? Give them a Southern accent. Even if you’ve established them as being from another part of the country earlier in the TV Show/Film.
Totally agree with this, and I’m glad I’m not the only one who wasn’t as impressed with the movie as it seemed like so many people were. I read the book before seeing the movie, and I know that 99.999 percent of books are better than movies, but in this instance the book and the movie are so different it is like they’re separate entities. I really liked the book, but I guess it was took dark to put on screen.
I went into this movie thinking that I wouldn’t like it and was actually pleasantly surprised as I felt that it did a good job with capturing some very American atmospheres even though it in the end failed to be coherent. Yes, the plot was a little clunky and not all the characters were fully realized, but I felt that it was good that Clooney was not given a whole back story, the whole point of his character was that he is always in transition as a traveler, but never really moves, I dislike the impulse Hollywood has to give every character a clearly discernible origin for their actions, I like the ambiguity there. I also saw the twist you dismiss coming and while it does bother me slightly, I think that it is really supposed to draw a contrast between her who is able to be happy because she can split her traveling fling filled life with her quiet home life unlike him who is unhappy living all of his life the same way. This is not an endorsement of her choice, which is wrong, but rather getting at what I think was supposed to be the heart of the movie, that some people are very dedicated to what they do and very good at it, yet unable to move beyond that.
When it comes to Kendrick’s character, it was very difficult for me to take her seriously unfortunately because she looks absurdly like Tom Cruise. So, in the end a movie that actually tried to do something unlike your typical big Hollywood Oscar bait, even if it fell short of its ambitions.
I enjoyed this movie very much (I am in the minority among my friends), but I found this review very interesting. If Keith is right that Farmiga’s character is a sociopath, though, I think her reaction when Clooney shows up at her door would make some sense. Farmiga’s character may be compartmentalizing her life, keeping every aspect of her life the way she likes it, as well as far apart from all other parts of her life. Clooney’s character showing up at her door would be worlds colliding, worlds she purposefully kept distinct, so she would be very upset. If she really had feelings for Clooney’s character, her reaction would have made little sense. For a “sociopath,” though, I thought it was appropriate.
I think the biggest problem was Ryan. The other two characters I buy for the most part. We only see Farmiga’s character from Ryan’s skewed persepective, which takes the form of a classic love story that it turns out not to be. Her character can’t be inconsistant beacuse we only see one side, the side Ryan sees, the entire film until the twist. It’s not great, but I think it’s passable.
With Natalie though, I completely disagree with you – it is precisely because she is all over the place that she is well formed and realistic. Maybe cliched at times, but cliches are not unrealistic.
Ryan though is the main problem. For a man who professes to desire a life apart from others, he sure jumps at every opportunity to bond with every single character he comes across. People don’t live their life in a manner alien to their base nature, and if Reitman wanted us to accept that, he needed to give us a reason to do so. That was the major failing of the film and since the entire film was built around us believing Ryan as a character, the film ultimately fell short.
I did enjoy the scenes of them laying people off and the use of real people in those roles. That was the best part of the film and if Reitman had the vision to build the film around that, it could have been an fantastic film representing the current economic malaise. As it was, the scenes didn’t fit with the rest of the film he made. Too bad.
I didn’t have this problem with Farmiga’s character. I mean, she turned out to be a selfish narcissist , but she didn’t act unrealistically to me.
Real people lack internal consistency. I got the impression that she was falling for Clooney too, and deep down wasn’t just after NSA sex. The “escape” speech she gave him was basically her telling herself what she wanted to hear once she was confronted with the reality of her actions. “Nope, I was just into this for the sex. No emotions here. None at all. I am in complete control of my life”.
Agree with you on the Claire Forlani thing, BTW. When I saw the Manchurian Candidate remake a few years back (not worth watching if you haven’t seen), I was convinced it WAS Forlani, since in 2004 I’d never heard of Vera Farmiga.
I’ll admit that the first time I saw the movie, I hated the twist at the end. After a few more viewings, I understand it, and appreciate it more.
Clooney’s character is a guy that doesn’t have a home. Yes he had the place in Omaha, but he rarely went there. He was always traveling, always on the job, and that was comfortable to him. He was all about routines – and airports and hotel rooms in a different city every night were second nature to him. He didn’t have close friends – he was distant from his family. His sister is getting married, and when her fiancee starts to get cold feet, the irony is that Clooney’s character is the guy that has to talk him in to committing to that relationship. He is a motivational speaker, so obviously he has the ability to sell people on ideas – but here’s a guy who doesn’t want to stop and settle down in his own life, and yet somehow he gets the guy to go back and carry on with the wedding.
During his motivational speech near the end of the film, we see him realize that the product he has been selling to the audience – the invisible back pack, and sticking everything you need in life in it – it’s all a bunch of B.S. He wants more than that back pack. And suddenly he rushes out to Chicago to get it – and then he realizes (and the audience realizes) that he’s been hoodwinked. And his heart is broken by a person that is so much like him. At the same time he finally reaches his airline miles goal – the one goal he really cared about – and he realizes that it doesn’t matter. He has spent so much time trying to get to that number – and his broken heart makes him realize how petty and unimportant that goal was. He would have given it all up to be with her, and to have his relationship have worked out like he was picturing it in his mind as he left the motivational speech to hop on that plane to Chicago to track her down. That is the only thing that really mattered – for him to be happy. And he can’t have that. It was taken from him. It was not real. But the airline miles – that is real. He reached that goal that he once cared so much about – and now that he climbed to the top of the mountain, he realizes the grass was greener on the other side. He liked feeling like he felt with her. He didn’t care about that stuff when he was going city to city firing people. But now it’s all he wants. I think we are supposed to leave the movie knowing that he realizes this now. He may not have the girl, but he knows what is really important in life, and it’s not his airline miles.
KLaw-
It seems like you are looking for reasons for people to be the way they are. Which simply isn’t always the case. Not in real life, at least. You intimate that Clooney’s character lacks a reason for abandoning his family and choosing to be detached. But why does he need a reason? Why can’t that just be how he is? The implication is that, save for some jarring event that deviates an individual from a path, people are supposed to be a certain way. That simply isn’t the case. And Farmiga’s character is the same. Why can’t she simply be a selfish narcissist? Why do there need to be hints on her dual life, especially when she has likely worked very, very hard to hide them? And, after all her lying, why do you believe she really cares and is dedicated to her children? I didn’t few that moment as her suddenly being a caring mom after her previous behavior indicated otherwise and that her response to Clooney was motivated by a desire to protect her kids. It was all about her. She didn’t want her Susie Homemaker life disrupted. She didn’t care about her kids, as evidenced by going on the romantic getaway. She wanted to have her cake and eat it, too. And when that was threatened, she flipped in a way we hadn’t seen before, because she so deftly prevented ever being threatened. Yea, the filmmakers were a bit dishonest by giving NO hint to the twist and then beating us over the head with it. But the behavior of the characters is only unbelievable if you expect there to be a reason and a plan to it all, which isn’t reality.
I’ll add that my biggest peeve was Kenny Powers not going Kenny Powers all over everyone.
Wow. Interesting. I enjoyed the movie, and I’m not a big Clooney fan, I had never before heard of Vera Farmiga or Anna Kendrick. After I saw the movie I read Walter Kirn’s book on which the movie is very loosely based, and while I think Walter Kirn is a fabulous essay writer I didn’t like the book. (The book was released before 9/11 and was doing pretty well until then, when interest in reading a book about air travel declined.)
Farmiga’s character wants to be the good wife and mother, to have the image of the good wife and mother, and to enjoy a side of crazy romance that’s made possible by her employment. Self-centered, deeply flawed, not sociopathic. Ryan Bingham thinks he doesn’t want commitment, except to his airline, until he finds out he does, and then he takes the big risk and … loses. (My question at the point of the big twist was: He never Googled her?)
I saw it when it was released, so it’s been awhile. Maybe I’d like it less now.
RFS-
You bring up a good point re: Google. I think movies/stories that rely on archetypal plot devices are going to lose believability as technology progresses. I think we are already seeing TV shows and movies that seemingly exist in a cell phone free universe, since the plot requires characters to be incapable of contacting each other. Some try to right in reasons for why the characters are cell phone less (dead batteries! no signal!), but some just pretend they never existed. Comedy sites like Cracked.com make lists of movies that would never work today because of some very basic and common technological advances. Now, maybe this is something that is always an issue… as technology is always advancing. But, the rate is exponential and stories written as recently as 5 years ago already seem dated. As you note, the book was written before 9/11, meaning before Google became a verb. I don’t know if that twist was in the original book but, yea, theoretically, going forward, there is very little reason for any character in a contemporary movie to be surprised by a new love interest. I guess “Up In the Air” can rely on Clooney being older and a bit of a luddite (he railed against computers on a few occasions), but that will only work for so long.
It seems like you are looking for reasons for people to be the way they are. Which simply isn’t always the case. Not in real life, at least.
I couldn’t disagree more. It’s not a coincidence, say, that the majority of death row inmates suffered physical or sexual abuse as children. Extreme behaviors, even ones that aren’t self-destructive like Ryan’s, usually have explanations.
But more relevant to this discussion is that Up in the Air is a scripted work, meaning that someone wrote the thing and designed the character. Either the character has a reason or reasons for his behavior, or he was simply drawn that way for the writer to use as a prop for his lazy script (and lazy it was). Those reasons create a more compelling story. If they’re absent, we’re left with an empty shell and the feeling that the writer just manipulated us because he wasn’t skilled enough to craft a full story.
Average film. I agree with most of the critiques.
The biggest plus of the film was how it was shot. I think the offices/sets, locations, colors, and such were great.
I see your point. But I do think it’s a stretch to compare the characters here to death row inmates. And, yes, I’m sure there is some explanation for their behaviors. But what if they are as mundane as daddy wasn’t around enough or mom was a frigid bitch. There really isn’t much of a compelling way to offer those reasons other than the characters offering personal narratives, which tend to get boring fast. Sometimes, we are just dropped in on characters who are who they are. I know plenty of people who exhibit the behavior exhibited by the characters and who have reasons for being the way they are but nothing that would really rise to the level of interesting; it’s just a conflation of their circumstances and their response to those circumstances, some of which is simply hardwired into a person. The story certainly had holes, but I guess I know and/or know of enough people to accept the characters as they were. My biggest complaint was with the young girl, who did simply seem to be a whole mash of stereotypes rolled into one.
While the author might have been lazy, it also might have been deliberate. Rather than tell us why the characters are the way they are, the film leaves open a discussion for how people relate to one another that doesn’t simply drift into, “People with troubled upbringings end up emotionally detached, desperately seeking affection, or both.” Not only is that overly simplistic but it’s not even true.
It is what it is though, a film that had far greater ambition than it realized.
BSK — The movie takes place after 9/11 even though the book was written before, so the Google question is relevant. When I say it’s very loosely based, I mean the book has a character named Ryan Bingham who flies a lot and does the job he does in the movie. If I recall correctly, the characters of Alex and Natalie are not in the book at all. But it’s been a few years since I read it.
The twist you mentioned to me in some ways was the hardest scene in the movie. I’m not sure if it is a cheat – in the sense that the movie (by that I mean Reitman) does not seem to be clear as to whether it believes her critique of Ryan. It seems more open to interpretation to me. I mean he could be running from something as such a crazy traveler – but who is SHE to make a moral judgment about it? She did lead him on – I sort of found the entire dynamic to be fascinating.
I have seen this movie 3 times (I see lots of movies) and have changed my opinion about it each time.
1) I saw it the week it came out excited to see a movie with excellent buzz about its Oscar worthiness. Also, I like Clooney in most things he does; he’s done wonders for the ‘sexiness quotient’ of men with graying temples. I liked the film when I first saw it but recognizes a lot of its flaws (mentioned on this website already) and ultimately considered the hype about this movie to be a damning indictment of the state of filmdom today: that a merely ‘solid’ movie stands out among the crop of hollywood crap simply because it tackles issues relevant to contemporary lives and does not center around hit men vampiric zombie superheros.
2) I saw it a year later on TV. I despised it. I hated the ponderous misogyny and depressive atmosphere. I really hated the Vera F. character’s absurd character turnaround/ plot device. And of course, by this point I had learned to hate everything Danny McBride does.
3) I saw it a couple weeks ago on TV. By now, I had stopped worrying about the state of filmdom as reflected in this movie and accepted the flick as a simple tale with good acting, nice Wes Anderson-like visual flourishes and pleasant, albeit slightly warped, morality. A nice 2 hour background for me to work on stuff.
I had a similar experience with Inglorious Basterds. And the 2011 Mets.
Keith,
I completely disagree that a character needs to have his/her psychoses explained, or else be an empty shell.
You’ve stated before that Eternal Sunshine is one of your favorite movies (mine too) and is every bit as character driven as Up In the Air, but Clementine’s misanthropy and relationship wanderlust are similarly unexplained. It’s just kind of who she is, and we as an audience are asked to accept it. Lot’s of great movies and great characters are like that.
I liked the quite film quite a bit. So it wouldn’t be surprising that I don’t agree with this review. I’ll briefly mention that I strongly disagree with the review’s analysis of Ryan Bingham and Alex. “One is that we never learn why Ryan is so afraid of commitments.” Ryan simply notes that this a life choice. A life choice that he prefers. Note that he isn’t a hermit as he enjoys the company of other people as much as most people. He just doesn’t prefer long term commitment. I hardly think this a deviant, lifestyle choice that demands lengthy explanation. This was actually my only minor problem with the Hurt Locker. Here we have a character who, unlike Ryan, exhibits behavior that could be classified by the DSM-IV-TR, but yet this mental condition is only explored superficially. Does Ryan’s dislike of marriage conform to what “average” American prefers? No, but research from the social sciences are showing more and more Americans are preferring to living alone and delaying marriage (granted this findings more specific to younger generations particularly in urban area). Ryan in a way typifies an emerging lifestyle choice. His life choice doesn’t and shouldn’t require lengthy exposition, and i would argue it would distract from the overall plot.
Regarding Alex, “… you’re a raging narcissist, and possibly a sociopath as well. Alex is two completely different characters that have virtually no crossover.” There are no reliable data on adultery for obvious reasons, but circumstantial evidence suggests it’s quite common in the US (unfortunately). I certainly won’t argue this is moral behavior. I generally don’t like preaching morals, but as something as basic as this, I’ll certainly say that I don’t condone it. That said, I don’t agree with the characterization of Alex as schizophrenic in any way. As she explains in the movie, Ryan is a “parentheses” or a break from her married life that while she appears to value, she also finds overwhelming and stressful. Her affair with Ryan makes quite a bit of sense in that light as it gives a release valve if you will. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying her character is a fully realized one, one with full of contradictions like most people. And I’ll say that the twist t was keenly foreshadowed in her talk to Natalie about what older women want from a man. I’ve rumbled on much more than I thought, but that’s my two cents. And I’ll just say that Leitch review is horrible.
“But more relevant to this discussion is that Up in the Air is a scripted work, meaning that someone wrote the thing and designed the character. Either the character has a reason or reasons for his behavior, or he was simply drawn that way for the writer to use as a prop for his lazy script (and lazy it was).”
He gives reasons during the conversation when he asks Natalie to sell him “marriage”. We can debates the merits of those reasons, but they are drawn out.
I did not, and would not, use the term “schizophrenic” to describe Alex. She is two different characters stitched together as a plot convenience, with no connection other than her physical appearance.
I disagree with you about Vera Farmiga character. I felt her change had to do with Ryan Bingham being an unreliable narrator. At the start of the movie Vera Farmiga’s scenes have a soft focus and pleasant color pallet. This shows Binghams feelings about her. The Scene in Chicago has a hard focus and harsh colors. This is more realistic showing the shift from Binghams reading of the situation and the reality of it.