Barack Obama Naked

Like “Juno” and “Thank You for Smoking” before it, Jason Reitman’s third film “Up in the Air” is a light, surefooted comedy rooted in moments of genuine heart. Like Juno MacGuff and Nick Naylor before him, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), the film’s protagonist, lives a lonely and somewhat troubled existence before he’s able, by uniting around his family, to transcend it. And like his previous work, “Up in the Air” is an achievement in technical filmmaking rather than one of emotional resonance; it is a solid, enjoyable indie film, but it is not as valuable or as enlightening as it purports to be.

The movie begins with a series of people being fired by the yet-unseen Ryan. Reitman presents these people, sobbing and stuttering, as a flip-book of corporate decline, using mostly non-actors who had recently lost their jobs. This casting choice never feels cheap or exploitative, instead imbuing the film with a sense of urgent verisimilitude. Once these first few are dispatched with, Ryan packs his things, glides through airport security, and flies―always American―to another city to repeat the process. His job, which keeps him on the road well over 200 days a year, is to remove others from theirs, to stand in for weak-willed bosses and help employees “transition” out of their old positions.

It’s thankless work, being the harbinger of unemployment―lonely too. With Ryan’s wry smile and graceful, almost floating steps, it’s easy to think that he regards his profession with a kind of unrealistic levity, but his commitment to doing it right reveals the respect he has for the people he terminates, even if he has to force himself to forget about them soon after he boards the next plane. When Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a recent graduate who plans to cut travel costs by championing video-conferencing rather than face-to-face encounters for firing employees, enters Ryan’s life of solitude, it feels like an intrusion. Not only is this bright-faced, serious-minded woman looking to interrupt his life’s rhythm, but also to rob him of the only other contact he has which are, strangely enough, the firings. Natalie lives behind a similar facade: outwardly confident but inwardly conflicted, even frightened. When Ryan asks her about the sound of thudding keystrokes that fills the cabin of their first flight together, she defensively quips “I type with purpose,” and we get the impression that this is not the first time she’s had to explain it.

Time stands still for Ryan. A slave to boarding passes and mini-bars, he isolates himself from meaningful human contact. His profession and demeanor have estranged him from his sisters―the youngest of whom is getting married―and he has no real friends to speak of. He treats family and coworkers with the same charming superficiality that he extends to those he fires on a regular basis. The soft smile, the even timbre, the compassionate eyes: all of these things, like Ryan, are fleeting. Though Natalie’s video conferencing idea is a clear signal of Ryan’s obsolescence, his static alienation is felt most poignantly in smaller scenes. When his sister refuses his offer to walk her down the aisle or when his neighbor, an old flame, gently rebuffs his once welcome advances―“I’ve started seeing someone”―we see that while Ryan has been living a routine, the world has moved on without him. During one of the motivational lectures he gives during the film, which identifies non-attachment as the key to successful business, he confidently asserts that “moving is living.” Ryan has, unfortunately, taken his own advice too literally; though he spends his days moving from city to city, he always stays in the same emotional place.

Reitman’s film, while not extraordinary, is worth your time. It is a sweet, funny look at a lonely man realizing he’s lonely, finally reaching out for all of the things he used to think weighed him down. Until the last sloppy and unnecessary 20 minutes, the film is comfortably paced and confidently rendered, moving Ryan through life and love (his on-the-road fling, Alex, is played by the irreplaceable Vera Farmiga) with relative ease, soaked in soft light and a grey-blue hue. Reitman’s auteurist presence is not, however, firm enough to make the film into something enduring.  “Up in the Air” is well-made, but will not necessarily be well-remembered.