I saw Up In The Air a couple days ago with George Clooney and wow did it take a turn on me from what I was expecting. I had no idea what it was about, I barely remember the commercials a year or so ago and it was Clooney flying around in planes doing something, then talking with the Anna Kendrick character.
In the movie, his job is to go from business to business to fire people. He talks to the audience a lot, breaking down the 4th wall, in a weird way to explain stuff to us to keep the movie going, mostly. He explains that when companies are too chicken shit to do the hard part of downsizing, they outsource the job to his company and he is very good and efficient at it. He says something about being in the air 320 days out of the year. As bad as this sounds, he also has no wife or kids and leaves in a tiny efficient apartment. He totally lives for his job, but alas, change is coming.
The company just hired a new upstart and she has ideas of using the computer to do the same job, so Clooney will no longer be a bird flying high from city to city, almost non-existent to those on the ground. He does not like this monkeying with his lifestyle and offers to take her under his wings to teach her what the job is really about. At the same time, he has a sister (Rose from Two and A Half Men) and she has requested he take a picture cutout of her and her hubby to be and take pictures in front of interesting US landmarks. Along the way he meets a lady who is very much like him, also travels a lot and they get together to do what adults do in private.
At a certain point, the young Anna character breaks Clooney down as a boy pretending to know everything when in reality he has not lived because he takes no chances on building real relationships and this life he is living is nothing more than a mask to hide him from the world. He takes his chance after this when it seems like it is the end of the line for his flying days and goes to the apartment where the lady lives hoping to make a bigger commitment but finds she has a husband and a house full of kids. Suddenly he feels exposed and even with his family at the wedding, his aunt tells him it is very hard to count on him or see him as family as he is gone most of the time, he is like a ghost.
I am not trying to get into the story of the movie, just the loneliness and sadness of this character who built a life by his own choice only to realize, perhaps too late that what he thought he wanted is not really anything, but that is what you are going to get. In the end, an accident happens and the video chats prove to be the wrong thing and his boss tells him he is going back up in the air, but I don't think he has the energy for it anymore, perhaps he wants to live like a real boy. Instead, the cameras cut away as he is staring at the board at the terminal figuring out what plane he is going to board next, just him and his efficient little suitcase.
Nobody died, which is what usually makes a movie sad, but this character was built empty and alone from the beginning and he says a couple of times that he is not interested in getting married and tied down. Maybe because I am and that seems to fill most of my time outside of work, what does one do if they never marry and don't have family close by? It seems a lonely way to be, or maybe I just don't get it.
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