GEORGE CLOONEY SPECIAL WEEK : A SERIOUS NOTE "UP IN THE AIR"

My memory is beginning to worry me slightly. For the past couple of days I have been repeatedly sitting down to watch films full of confidence that they are one thing only to find out that they were something quite different all together. Sometimes this turns out to be a pleasant surprise, sometimes not. For Up In The Air, it was very pleasant indeed. Now, don’t make puppy eyes at me, the fact that George Clooney is in the film may excuse a multitude of sins but it doesn’t cover all of them. If the film is boring, it’s boring, Clooney or no Clooney. With this film I was under the distinct impression that Catherine Zeta Jones was in it (do NOT ask me where I got that from but I did). With her and George Clooney I thought “Boy meets girl in airport. His life changes. Blah.” And left the screening of the film to a future date. When I finally got round to it, the first surprise came in the opening credits (I, unlike most sane and normal people, tend to read the ones in the opening) when Catherine Zeta Jones’s name didn’t pop up. Not surprising seeing as she has nothing to do with the film. Then the film itself came along. Yes, boy meets girl in airport, that much is a given. However there is no “blah” factor in this movie. It is gritty and true to life. It oozes with substance. I love it.
Ryan (George Clooney) has a rather interesting job. He basically travels around America visiting big corporations for his company. His job is to fire people. The job is ruthless and the endless days wiled away on the road draining to say the least, but… Ryan loves his life. His love goes to the extent that he also does motivational speeches about how people should avoid commitment of any sort to achieve true success and happiness. He lives in a little cocoon of “club member treatment”, alleviates his loneliness with passing “ships in the night” like himself, in short, he has it all. Until, of course the company decides to do things differently. The 23 travelling employees like Ryan are eating the company’s budget and the powers that be have decided that they will try applying the “firing squad” online, thus saving immensely on bills. With his perfect lifestyle becoming redundant, his executive world crumbling and neither home nor family waiting to support him, how will Ryan turn things around?
Now this film isn’t exactly new. The date it was released was poignant because, if I am not much mistaken, it was around the worst days of the recent credit crunch. With people losing jobs and livelihoods left right and center the film focuses on the feeling of uncertainty. The uncertainty and unsettledness that Ryan thrives on but the rest of us (most of the rest of us anyway) hate. Stop and imagine doing a job like that for a second. Firing people. Day in, day out. I just couldn’t do it. Of course, this being a film, we see plenty of Ryan firing people, and it is touching to find out, at the end, that some of the people we see were not actors but actual people from the business world who lost their jobs. I defy anyone who has held down a regular job for at least a few years to watch those scenes without a considerable lump in their throat. It’s like having the carpet pulled from under your feet. You are then thrown up in the air and try to find your feet again. It’s deep and difficulty stuff Ryan causes but has never had to face himself. He isn’t fired per say, but his lifestyle has been ended. He has to find a new way of surviving and that comes to the same thing psychologically, pay check or no pay check. It is really refreshing to see Hollywood movies focusing on real and gritty issues.
I like the end as well. It isn’t a happy ending per se, and you will have to go through one heck of a lot of heartache to get there (as will Ryan) but the experience is worth it. No doubt.