Mission 7D.7F.7C – Day Two: Up In The Air

I haven’t even posted my second film experience of the week and I’m already feeling the pressure of having to keep this up for another 5 days. It’s not that I can’t go through with it. I just don’t want to do a bad job of it by rushing through. Which isn’t easy considering the hectic (and random) flow of thoughts inside my head. So, putting that thought on the back-burner for a while, here goes day two of Mission 7D.7F.7C:

Date: March 2, 2010 (Tuesday)

Film: Up In The Air

Cinema: Inox, Garuda Mall, Magrath Road, Bangalore

The best thing about watching films on weekdays is that you’re almost certain of getting tickets for any show of the day, especially if you’re by yourself. Plus, most multiplexes just haven’t been as full as they were pre-recession. Which works very well for my crowd-hating introverted self. I got even luckier today with the best seat in the auditorium (last row from the screen and below the projector beam)! There just weren’t enough takers for the silver screen tonight.

Coming to the film, I really appreciated the subtle use of colour and well-designed type in the opening credits (a lean sans serif typeface in white for names combined with a rustic old-world serif typeface in yellow for other info) of Up In The Air. It cleverly set the mood for what was to be a meandering journey through one man’s realisation of the emptiness in his own life. In some ways, the film reminded me of ‘Away We Go’, with its gentle unfolding of events to the happy conclusion at the end.

Up In The Air is about a professional downsizer, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who spends his years flying from one city to another, firing people from their jobs. An accomplished business traveller, he has mastered the art of breezing through airports, planes, rental cars and hotel rooms without making any real connection with the people he is surrounded by. He prides himself in leading a life of isolated existence without the commitments that bog other people down till he falls for a woman named Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), who, like him, is also a frequent flyer.

In spending time with her, he begins to question his beliefs about never wanting to get married or settle down. At the same time, the conversations he has with Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a 20-something colleague he is training, nudge him to re-evaluate what life means to him. Does he really want to continue living out of a cabin-baggage sized wheeler case with no one to come home to? Or does he want to grow old in the company of a woman he loves? At a conference in Las Vegas, where he is giving his renowned ‘empty your backpack’ seminar, the answer comes to him before he has even managed to finish his first sentence. But he is in for a rude surprise even as he finally acknowledges the emptiness in his life that has been masked as ambition all this while (he is on the verge of earning 10 million frequent flyer miles and joining a very exclusive club with few other members).

The film ends with Ryan finally having made a connection with people that goes beyond the superficial. He transfers enough of his miles to enable his recently married younger sister and her husband to go an a honeymoon vacation around the world that they couldn’t afford. He writes a glowing recommendation letter for Natalie (who quit her job after finding out that a woman she fired had committed suicide just as she had said she would) that bags her the job she had originally wanted. He starts empathising with the people he is sent to fire.

And so, he finally makes the connection that the film’s poster says he is ready for.

Watch the film for director Jason Reitman’s characteristic brand of unconventional humour that has given previous hits like “Juno” and “Thank You For Smoking“.

Though the film might not connect as much with Indian audiences who haven’t had to bear the brunt of the global recession as the Americans have, it does have a very important message for us urban dwellers as we are dangerously on the verge of losing our connections with local community in an over-connected digital world dominated by Facebook and Twitter.

I rate the film a cool 5/5. Go watch it!