Up In The Air

Up in the air, at heart a love story, is set in the backdrop of recession, and  the cruel process of  'lay offs'.

Bryan Bingham (George Clooney) fires people for a living. He does the dirty job, for bosses who don't have the courage to do it themselves.

Jason Reitman, the director interviewed over a hundred people who had been laid off to get those sequences right, and in fact many of them in the movie were the people who had been laid off, and only some of them are actors.

You see the intense and varied reactions.........confusion, tears, rage, pleas, and even a suicide. An extreme situation for anybody, especially so people in mid life, who might have spent several years with the company, committed, made it their identification, their way of life, presumed they were permanent, and then this rude shock when the carpet is pulled out from under their feet.

Bryan delivers with care and grace, does what can be called a good job of a difficult (horrible) situation. He is smooth, has his script right, and empathetic enough. He is travelling 52 weeks in the year, living out of hotel suites and airport lounges and on flights....... and he seems to love it. He loves his plus 40 single status and the no strings life he leads.

Two women enter his life, two totally unlike each other...two who come and disturb his carefully built tranquility and through that process enable him to find facets of himself he'd barely touched himself. 

Natalie a B school graduates who joins his firm threatening to disrupt business and his very way of life with a video conference model of sacking and downsizing. And it's then that we and he he realize that beneath is this guy who understands people, understands grief and panic, and the one who you slotted as the hatcher, is the one with the most compassionate heart.

Alex (Vera Farmiga) another business executive with who he crosses regular flight paths, someone who has the same uncomplicated needs as his, and the chemistry works.

They initially seem happy with a casual relationship, but it's one that unwittingly gets more complex, throws up conflicts, some which get resolved, and some left in limbo.

A movie worth watching !