Up In The Air

I watched the Academy Awards the other weekend. It was the first awards show I have watched in six years. I was at my neighbors’ place eating Sunday dinner and it was on so we decided to watch it. The Sunday Dinner has become a pretty regular occurrence and gives me a regular television fix. It also hasn’t helped me get in shape because they cook big, elaborate and delicious meals. Being televisionless means I get all my news from newspapers and radio. Often that news is about things or events on television so I know the stories and history of things without ever actually seeing the event (the internet here is too slow to stream video). When I actually get to see the event, it gives me a tickle.

This is probably also the first time I have seen the big movies of the night that had been written about in the seemingly never-ending lead up to the Oscars – Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I’m not one who rushes to the theatre to see a blockbuster. The Hurt Locker I “borrowed” from the internet back in Anchorage and the tiny theatre in Nome, whose lobby is also the Subway store, got Avatar and some friends were going to see it so I tagged along. The Hurt Locker was alright. Kathryn Bigelow makes decent adrenaline junkie, modern cowboy tales. Point Break holds a special place in my heart. Still, The Hurt Locker just didn’t blow my mind. I think being a huge fan of the HBO mini series Generation Kill has ruined Iraq movies for me. They just don’t compare to an accurate and real life account like it was. It is like watching some WWII shoot ‘em up after seeing Band of Brothers.

Avatar just sucked. It was a waste of 2 ½ hours of my life. It was special f/x pornography. If I’m going to watch pornography, it better have bush and cock making friends with each other, not glowing, floating dandelion seeds and Elphanrhinosaurs’ attacks. The plot appeared to have been written by a pimple-faced Star Wars fanboy as an Earth Day project. The dialogue was as engaging and clever as the manual for my Ford Ranger. Unobtanium? Really? Reeaaaaallly? Why not just name the CEO of the mining company Cash McGreedy and the army guy Captain Bigot?

Anyhow, The Hurt Locker won a lot of awards. The point of all this is that the next day I went online and looked at all the less written about nominees and queued them up in Netflix. First on my list was Up In the Air. I didn’t really know much about it going in. I just saw George Clooney and thought let’s go for it. I like George Clooney. His modern day Cary Grant has not grown old to me yet. Plus he likes South Park and has a pet pig.

I really enjoyed Up In the Air – interesting plot and dialogue, a nice mix of humor and drama, visually pleasant and a brief shot of bare ass. It is a good Saturday night popcorn movie. I also enjoyed it because parts of it hit a little close to home.

The plot is a bit complex. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate axe-man for hire, meaning companies hire him to fire people for them. He is a suave and polished “two Bobs” from Office Space. He spends his life flying around the United States firing people. 322 days of the year he is flying. He has a barren apartment in Omaha where the company he works for is located, but his real home is in airports, on airplanes and in hotel rooms. He also occasionally gives motivational speeches called “what’s in your backpack.” He preaches a philosophy of life with no personal, emotional or physical attachments to hold one down. He says at one speaking engagement,

“The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.”

It is never revealed whether he adapted the lifestyle for the job or took the job to suit his lifestyle. The movie leaves that chicken and the egg problem for the audience to decide.

Clooney is the best at his job and able to communicate with people in their most vulnerable state and convince them that the firing/lay-off is just a new start (and also prevent them from going postal). As his personal life is filled with short interactions and friends who only last only as long as a flight, it is a natural fit for any deep, emotional encounters to come from the short interaction with those being fired. A young upstart Natalie, played by Anna Kendrick, decides to change the industry by firing people via video chat and thus confining Clooney to an office in Omaha. He is left with one last chance to hit the road while both showing Natalie the ropes and trying to save his gallivanting lifestyle by convincing her of the personal interaction needed in the profession.

The story doesn’t stop there because, well, because being single and moving isn’t the American way. It doesn’t sell houses and useless shit to decorate those houses. Apparently all of us single vagabonds are miserable and don’t know it. Thus, we get Vera Farmiga playing Alex, a fellow traveler and Clooney’s love interest. She was excellent and was equal to, if not better than Clooney in much of the movie. Anyhow, Clooney, partly through Natalie’s nagging, realizes he has feelings for Alex, or thinks he does, or we think he does, or we think he should. I’m not sure which, but the movie tries really hard to make us realize that no man is an island and we all need to settle down.

I don’t buy it. It wasn’t until I started moving around that I became truly happy. I live out of a U-haul and pick-up instead of a carry-on, but the core principles of moving and staying unattached are the same. Seeing new things and meeting new people are what life is about. Sure, as the movie states, your best memories are with somebody else, but why does that have to be the same person? Why shouldn’t we follow our goal to see the world or in Clooney’s case earn 10 million airline miles?

When animals are forced together and over populated they die of disease and starvation if not outright killing each other. We live in a world of 6 billion people and projected to be 9 billion within 40 years. Who wants to settle down into that? I don’t want to volunteer for being in the cage. Maybe I am full of youthful idealistic wanderlust. Maybe when I hit forty I will have some epiphany and crave a home with a garage and a backyard that little kids can play in. Until that time comes, I will keep moving.

For all my fellow travelers, couchsurfers, vagabonds, hobos, drifters and tramps I highly recommend Up In the Air. If is a very good movie that weaves travel, relationships, the shitty economy and the effects of modern technology on jobs into one beautifully shot (have to give a shout out for the cinematography – actually shot on scene in real airports, hotels and lounges) and acted movie. It may change your mind or may not. It will at least highly entertain you for an hour and half.