By Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter
George Clooney is the rock solid core of “Up In the Air,” and I think that’s saying quite a lot. As good as it is, and it’s very good, you can’t imagine the movie working its magic on you without him.
Clooney is one of the few bankable actors who seem as comfortable in ensembles as in leading roles. With comparatively little screen times he shines in films like “Burn After Reading,” “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” and “Syriana.”
But his skills go beyond performing. As a producer and director in “Good Night and Good Luck” and “Confessions of A Dangerous Mind,” in which he also took supporting roles, he’s shown a taste for challenging material as well as unusual restraint in giving the showy parts to other actors. He’s remarkably generous for a guy with so much power. But recently we’ve missed the pleasure of seeing him center stage in a meaty comedy, where he could employ his considerable charm over the entire running time. Until now.
“Up in the Air” is crafty, smooth, and timely. It’s dark but it isn’t black. There’s an open, questioning tone that keeps the film from veering into the predictable, even when it taps familiar sentiments. This is what sophisticated entertainment is supposed to be.
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) makes his living firing people. Right from the start we know he has few reservations about the unsavory tasks he regularly performs. Shortly after we first see him he cheerfully boasts about doing “the dirty work other people don’t have the balls to do.” On the job he’s glib and deceptive. He offers his victims an outstretched hand at the same time he takes them down. And in a metaphor that sums up his deep disconnection from the ills he visits on others, most of his waking hours are spent flying.
During an unexpected layover he meets an attractive fellow traveler, Alex (Vera Farmiga.) Sparks fly. While we aren’t told exactly what Alex does, we get the sense that she’s as nomadic and rootless as Ryan. Their chemistry leads to a camaraderie born of mutual distrust in trust. And most important to their respective comfort zones; they develop no expectations.
Farmiga fits the role on a couple of levels. She’s cool without seeming cold and glamorous without the benefit of great beauty. Her eyes, for example, are less expressive than her poise and delivery. She’s unthreatening until she opens her mouth, at which point she projects an almost tactile confidence. You can see why she’s won so many TV parts, and key roles in everything from moody indies (”Down to the Bone,” “Joshua”) to horror films (“Orphans.”)
Shortly after he meets Alex, Ryan is saddled with Natalie (Anna Kendrick) a twenty something straight out of college, whose novel idea to fire people via the internet threatens his comfortable career. But he almost gleefully accepts the challenge. Keenly attuned to her inexperience, he rapidly disables the thinly rigged personal armor that keeps her on track. Their first few scenes on the road, where she flounders at first, but then comes back at him with a hail of invective, have a crackling energy that recalls the screwball comedies of the thirties and forties.
You may not recognize Kendrick, but she effectively played a dizzy teenager in both “Twilight” films. For “Air” she has completely reordered her presence, replacing the bubbling teen speak of the two earlier parts with a self important, Ivy League diction that perfectly complements a clenched physical demeanor.
The movie hits a comic high point when Natalie, her ego hobbled by a personal setback, seeks comfort from Ryan and Alex in an antiseptic airport lounge that might as well be either of their living rooms. She’s fallen into their clutches entirely, and the two, knowing in ways she can hardly imagine, could eviscerate her in an instant. But they don’t. As she runs off at the mouth, inadvertently insulting them with every remark, the two seasoned pros endure her like indulgent foster parents. The scene, perfectly constructed from all that’s gone before, is as smart and funny an adult encounter as we’ve seen in years.
But there’s more to come, because all three characters are loaded with the potential for calamity. We get the expected tension as the stakes between Alex and Ryan get higher, and the unexpected release at a family reunion, where Ryan is pressured into crossing his usual boundaries. The movie gets a little gauzy in these passages, but they’re well calculated for things to come. The ending, a nice surprise, has heft without the sort of dreary self importance that would betray the rest of the movie.
With “Up in the Air,” director and co-writer Jason Reitman, still in his early 30s, has scored three for three. His first two films, “Thank You For Smoking,” and “Juno,” show an impressive instinct for character based comedy that avoids the tried and true. They were both likable movies about people who make dicey choices.
The type of humor his work relies on is tricky because it’s dependent on subtle writing, which can be hard to play, since it doesn’t jump off the page like the noisy jokes in slash and burn comedies like “Hangover” or “Knocked Up.” But there’s more to it than that. The skill set here, and it’s very rare, calls for keeping comic and dramatic elements in the right balance, and then taking the stories one giant step further. In order to have an impact they’re almost forced to go to a place where they could easily fail. Instead, they win.
Three challenging but audience friendly movies in a row is no mean feat. Obviously Rietman wants to sit at the adult table, along with our sharpest wits, a short list that includes Alexander Payne, (“Sideways”) Mike Nichols, (“The Graduate”) and of course Woody Allen. He seems up to the challenge.
Clooney, beyond the script this movie’s strongest asset, is indispensable to the complex equation. As written, Ryan Bingham is as casually destructive as he is intelligent. And he’s very intelligent. But Clooney makes him palatable. His conspiratorial smile instantly neutralizes our resistance, inviting us to vicariously participate in his unkind tasks in spite of our better judgment.
I can’t think of another actor who could have done it better. Clooney’s gifts are large. A less attractive actor wouldn’t have provided the catnip to keep us intrigued. A sweeter presence would have blunted the character’s impact. Clooney tackles the part with a searing gaze and razor sharp line readings. But when he gets with Farmiga we feel that he genuinely enjoys the company of another human, in spite of his protests to the contrary.
The tendency is to think that he’s all manner and surface, because he makes it seem so easy. But if you really think that replay the last five minutes of “Michael Clayton,” where a single long take brings you deep inside his troubled character. Clooney pulls it off without a single word. While the credits are playing!
Eric Steelbergs’ perceptive camera work, well synched to the material, is another positive. There’s very little extraneous in his frames. His color schemes are muted in the travel scenes, and appropriately warmer in later passages. Note that he also shot “Juno” and “500 Days of Summer,” but in very different styles.
There have been complaints that “Up In The Air” is cavalier in the way it deals with the sad state of our current economy, and especially the distress of so many people displaced by downsizing. But this flies in the face of a tradition in popular film that goes back to the early talkies, to depression era classics like “My Man Godfrey” and “Nothing Sacred.” Comedy can be just as trenchant as any other genre. The problem is that when it takes on sensitive material it faces the challenges of multitasking. And often fails.
And then there’s the charge of manipulation, at the untrustworthy hands of charm. Look, movies that capture and hold our attention are always engaged in seduction of one form or another. They might call on special effects, sex, violence, beauty, or a host of other elements; the medium is rich with possibilities. Genuine charm is among the more rarefied devices, conjured from a brew of elements that defy easy analysis.
An interesting lapse in tone, obviously intentional, will serve to make a point. At least twice in “Up In the Air,” real people, fired from their jobs, appear in front of the camera, to briefly tell their stories. These scenes have two opposing effects. First, they remind us that real flesh in blood is at stake. But on the other hand, the ordinary looks and delivery of non actors interrupts the seamless flow of the rest of the cast, and takes us out of the movie.
I appreciated Rietman’s impulse, but I couldn’t help wonder if real actors, whose stock and trade is evoking the wide range of human emotion, couldn’t have better achieved his ends? It’s a difficult question, and I’m at a loss to answer. But it brings us back to the issue of George Clooney, who gives life to a character who, say, in a documentary, would probably come across as a hateful zombie. If given a choice most of us would pass up ten of these clowns to spend time with George Clooney playing one of them. Which brings us to another uncomfortable reality; how is it he’s so gifted when the rest of us are so ordinary? Just kidding.
