Up in the Air - A movie Review

Last Thursday, I was sitting in the Hyderabad airport, waiting for my flight to arrive, and thinking on what should be my next blog topic. Suddenly out of nowhere, I got reminded of this recent flick that I had seen which seemed to be a complete match to my wait for the flight situation. And so, here is my review on “Up in the Air” literally written up in the air, on-board my Flight from Hyderabad to Ahmedabad.

Up in the Air

Cast: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick

Director: Jason Reitman

Overall Rating: 7.5/10.0 (A very good movie to watch)

For most of us, the very thought of taking a flight reminds us of endless queues for luggage checkin, waiting a grueling amount of time before the boarding commences and then the flight itself, where we are made to breathe recycled air, given some cookies and snacks, while time gets spent looking at the clouds, without nothing much in sight. However, this is the story about Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who is kind of obsessed with the thoughts of flying, so much so, that he prefers to be on-the-move, rather than stay snuggled on the ground.

In his life on the ground, Ryan works for a company, which takes the outsourcing of the work of downsizing people. This means that Ryan is always on the move, going from one city to another, visiting the offices of the loser-bosses as he calls them, and helping them by discussing with the to-be-fired employees about their dismissal. The idea of travelling is also perfect for Ryan who wants to keep earning more sky miles and reach a magic figure of 10 million miles, as a sense of personal achievement. He keeps buying and spending all of the allocated corporate allowances to ensure that his sky-miles keep getting maxed out. The idea behind this is to ensure excellent loyalty-related services for being a preferred customer. Things seem to be going pretty smooth for Ryan, when all of a sudden; Natalie (Anna Kendrick) enters the scene. Natalie is a 23-year old graduate from Cornell, who is all set to revolutionize the way firing is done, by bringing in ideas like using Remote Access Video Conferencing to lay-off people and having set of instructions, almost an algorithm to inform people about their lay-off.

Being the big-fish in town, Ryan obviously doesn’t like the changes and he takes Natalie with him “on-the-road” so that she understands the need for the human presence when the axe is lowered. The idea is to explain to Natalie, that the way she treats this business makes it seem like a presumed human resource expert, who follows a set of instructions and has no grasp of the human character. On the other hand, Ryan fires people sitting face to face, with a smile on his face, and sometimes even giving a pat at the back of the employee being downsized, doesn’t hurt the person on the other side of the table as much. In fact, he even tries at times to make the person realize that it is a blessing-in-disguise and they should look forward for tomorrow, with renewed hope and energy. It is this journey in which, while teaching Natalie the emotional side of the job; that Ryan figures out a lot about himself. For the first time, he understands the importance of family and friends in life.

The story also takes a slight romantic twist when Ryan meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), who is also a high-flying executive and probably as mile-hungry as him. Their perception of life and definition of relationships though seem to be inhumane to most of us, are perfect for each other, and thus this adds a new chapter in the story.

The movie also shows Ryan as a public speaker, who takes sessions on explaining people how to work and how to fly. He comes up with this theory of packing the life in a single back-pack. The idea he lives by is that the higher the luggage, the slower you will be able to move. He goes on to say that emotional baggage is also a baggage, and carrying it will slow you down in life. As he says, "The slower we move, the faster we die."

Final Verdict:

To put it in short, this is a movie about Ryan, a downsizing expert, whose everyday brushes with people to be fired, their anguish and despair have left him falsely compassionate, living out of suitcase and loving every second of it, trying to protect his way of life from the prying eyes of Natalie, who wants to ground him by using Remote Access to do the job instead. And yet, the genre of the movie is comedy, in spite of all the layoffs and the depression the movie talks about.

Though the movie is not completely flawless, the movie comes with a beautiful message portraying the impact of lay off in the life of a person, but more importantly, the part, when in the post-layoff counseling, most of the people who were given the pink slip, speak up about the support and understanding of their families and friends, due to which they could sail over the trauma.

All in all, Up in the Air, is definitely a good watch, for the beautiful handling of a sensitive topic, which brings us closer to ourselves. By any chance, if you are going to travel by an International Airlines like Emirates, which give you a choice of movies to be watched, “Up in the Air” should definitely top the list of the movies to be watched while you are up in the air.