Ryan Bingham loves his work, though most of us would find it deplorable. His job is to fly from city to city around the US and fire you from your job. Of course there’s a sophisticated terminology for this kind of profession and Bingham is the first to remind us that he’s a “transition specialist”, not an executioner. The euphemism is not lost in Jason Reitman’s “Up In The Air“. Indeed, as Bingham, played to perfection by George Clooney, expertly and efficiently traverses the corporate American landscape and the high-end business travel that accompanies it, we gain insight into a character that has effectively severed himself from emotional commitment. He’s an expert at terminating employees precisely because he’s mastered the art of detachment. The ethos governs his personal philosophy as well – Bingham’s motivational speech titled “What’s In Your Backpack” praises the benefits of personal minimalism, avoiding commitments and the satisfaction of evading human connection. “Your relationships are the heaviest thing in your life.”

Yet Bingham is a likable character, and this should be credited to Clooney who instills his subject with both smoothness and self-irony, yet also a subtle vulnerability that allows the audience to invest in his capacity for change. Bingham takes pride in the memberships, privileges, and points that come with traveling on business 322 days of the year. His hubris and bizarre predilection for the alienation of modern life and the dispiriting airport and hotel settings in which he lives are clearly source for much comedic value, but the true substance of the film emerges as Bingham’s minimalism is confronted with genuine emotion and humanity. His lifestyle of perpetual escape – epitomized by his constant travel – is threatened when a young Cornell graduate, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), posits that the company should cut costs by terminating employees via teleconference instead of flying around the country to do the job face to face. Secondly, his ethic of personal disinvolvement is called into question when he falls for his road warrior alter ego Alex, brilliantly portrayed by Vera Farmiga (“Think of me as yourself, only with a vagina,” she tells him). The relationship starts off as impersonal as we’d expect for a man whose highest dream is amassing 10 million frequent flyer miles. But Bingham ultimately discovers that physical and emotional baggage are inescapable and that life cannot fit neatly and succinctly in a carry-on sized suitcase.

“Up In The Air” is both the smartest and funniest film of 2009. It’s also the most topical and gutsy. A film about a man whose job it is to fire people when over 10% of the nation is unemployed is daring to say the least. Ultimately, Clooney’s character could be interpreted as a metaphor for the way in which corporate America has lost sight of personal value and human emotion. To be sure, the film does chide the coldness of modern society – the superficial smiles, the impersonal perks, the artificial hospitality – but it does so much in the way that Jacques Tati derided the sterility of modern urban lifestyle in his film “Play Time“. It is a judgment of aesthetics and personal values, not politics. To view this film as a diatribe against capitalism or even as a prescription for a better future is to miss the point. “Up In The Air” is a film that asks us to weigh what is important in our lives. Bingham may be right when he says “The slower we move, the faster we die,” but what he learns is that it’s better to die fast and have shared connections than to die slow and have missed the flight altogether.

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