Up in the Air

Up in the Air, a movie loosely based on a book by the same name, stars George Clooney. You’ve read the reviews; now you can see it at your local movie theater. What a way to end 2009 and a decade of clear uncertainty about who we are as human beings and Americans!

Ryan Bingham (played by Clooney) fires employees for a living. He works for a company doing the dirty work for other companies that lack the guts to do it themselves. It’s unclear how much money Bingham makes himself, though his company is raking it in during a season of layoffs and downsizing. Bingham is in it for the frequent flyer points he earns. He spent 322 days traveling during the preceding year. His home is constructed of airports, airplanes, and hotel rooms.

Bingham is good at what he does: making limbo tolerable for the wretches he sacks. He uses scripted lines to make them look to the future instead of the present or past, start over again as all great masters of the universe have done, and pursue a lifelong dream that corporate America’s money took from them 20 or 30 years ago. An occasional suicide notwithstanding, he’s doing God’s work.

When a young, would-be superstar proposes that the company begin firing employees via videoconferencing, thus saving travel time and expenses, Bingham revolts. The least you can do when destroying a life is to do it face to face.

Ryan comes close to an epiphany, but he’s saved from it by one of his own. He’s back in the air, collecting miles, and doing work another can’t bear to do but will pay for. He eases back into his comfort zone: “The slower we move, the faster we die. We are not swans. We’re sharks.”

Sadly, let’s all drink to that this New Year’s Eve.

1. 

   ACU Frank says:

   January 4, 2010 at 2:39 pm

   I loved the episode of Cheers in which Norm becomes his employer’s hatchetman… He brings his prey to the bar, buys them a beer, and cries about their fate until they tell him it’s okay, they understand.