Up in the Air

Relationships are of utmost importance to director Jason Reitman. His 2005 Thank You for Smoking explored the connection between smoking and society. In 2007, Juno looked at the cultural and personal reactions to teen pregnancy. His newest film is very much about the individual and his place in society. Up in the Air follows a single and solitary man whose multitude of interactions are so voluminous that they prevent him from forming anything more than momentary connections with the passerby.

Reitman’s film is very much a product of the present. We are a society concerned with timeliness, order, efficiency, and being everywhere at once. The flashy and quickly changing tiles that introduce the film set the speed that much of it follows. Quick cuts and calculated actions point out the inherent rhythm of proficiency our society has developed. It is fast paced, all business, and designed for maximum profit. Blackberries, timetables, and credit cards represent the all-consuming technology that make functioning without it in today’s society practically impossible. And perhaps as the main characters realizes, it is all designed with itself in mind, not its users.

Interestingly, it is only when his world is threatened- through a new and more efficient technology- that the user clings ever closer to what he sees as human. As a man who fires others for a living, Bingham (Clooney) interacts with people at their weakest and most crucial point. For a short time he is connected with someone who needs him. For a short time he is doing what he truly believes will help. For a short time he is practically human. And for all the hundreds of hours he spends speaking other than face to face and all the millions of miles he has logged flying, it is the brief and practiced moments of life changing conversation where he is connected. When the longevity of this interaction is jeopardized, by what should be a more natural electronic mode, Bingham faces the same life threatening realization he has been delivering with satisfaction for years.

For what at times seems a dredging of our growing inhumanity is more consistently a reflective and probing exploration of the cultural state of affairs. We have become inferior to our lifestyles whose longevity supersedes our own in importance. At the same time the film is an ironic characterization of a man whose happiness is his occupation, an occupation surviving on cannibalism. Reitman’s film is as fast paced as the society that created it and perhaps as savage. Hopefully, it will be an eye-opening and insightful example of the many ways we could benefit from change.