Up in the Air Charming Victory, if Not a Definitive Winner
Laura Flippin's latest blog post:
In 1992, Mark Auge released a piece of work entitled Non-Places, which detailed public venues individuals use for convenience but which fail to be truly relevant to us. In essence, these spaces are holding places that we may use, but which we never truly occupy. Some examples are in the form of reception areas and airport departure lounges.
According to a review completed by The Guardian, Jason Reitman took this concept of Non-Places and built an entire story around habituating nothing but these spaces. In the resulting film, entitled Up in the Air, Ryan Bingham, as played by George Clooney, travels from corporation to corporation with the sole purpose of offering “outplacement counseling;” in essence, he is who the boss calls when the individual lacks the courage to engage in a mass firing of his own employees. As a result, Bingham spends nearly all of the fifty-two weeks in a year in the air, travelling between hotel-to-hotel and plane-to-plane.
Most humans need that physical validation of existence, such as an apartment or home to call their own. However, that is not the case for Bingham, who delights in the impersonal feel of the always freshly cleaned airport hubs, hotel rooms and planes. In particular, Bingham has a deep affection for Hilton hotels and American Airlines; director Reitman uses this inclination to draw a keen attention on society’s craving for specific brands. When Bingham is forced to return to his often neglected and disregarded apartment, it has no comfort to provide him; the scenes show a depressive and scuzzy side of his disposition.
When Bingham’s boss, played by Jason Bateman, brings in Natalie, a newbie to the field, as played by Anna Kendrick, the terrain of the job will never be the same for Clooney’s character. Natalie has revolutionized Bingham’s job of mass firing through the use of applications such as iChat, rendering expensive air travel no longer necessary.
Through this, Bingham is forced to come to several realities about his job and his life. As he attempts to justify the need for face-to-face firing, he sees that there is an inherent and previously unforeseen level of compassion to his job and, as a result, he finds a sense of compassion in himself that had escaped his attention prior. While Bingham still focuses too much on a loyalty to brands and not enough on developing loyalty to his flesh and blood family, the message is clear, allowing Up in the Air to serve as, perhaps not a revolutionary work of art, but a piece that is sophisticated and funny to the point of enjoyable.
from Laura Flippin Movie Reviews http://ift.tt/1zNHFYO