Up in the Air

I saw "Up in the Air" last week and thought it was...interesting.

Here's the thing, on the one hand it might be one of the most devastating critiques of American Corporate/Economic culture in a recent movie, maybe the best since "Office Space." It's almost Marxian in it's takedown.

Here's what you get-- a bunch of corporations are going to lay a bunch of people off but are so lame about doing it, they hire "consultants" to do the work for them and lay all the people off. The "consultants" are shown not to be terribly concerned about what they're doing and it's implied that after the package they present to the person laid off is handed over with information and advice, they don't really want people to respond back and don't really care if they do.

Of course the corporation that lays people off would also like to make more profits, despite the fact they are said to be doing great what with the economic downturn and all, so decide that they need to cut their expenses. This means no more flying around laying people off and instead, they bring in Anna Kendrick's character to introduce a way to lay people off via video. Therefore, in an attempt to squeeze more profits than they already do, the company decides to do something that will only depersonalize the one service they do provide, a service that should in no way be done in any way that could be seen as impersonal. Later, it is shown that even though both Anna's character and George's character have disagreement's about the whole video thing, the company still sets it up and hires a bunch of youngish looking employees to lay people off while sitting in their cubicles.

And there you have it, everything that's wrong with our economic system excluding anything financial related-- downsizing, consultants (sorry certain readers), and increasing depersonalization in the name of increasing profits.

Now, this movie could be seen as a brutal takedown, and something more illuminating and entertaining than Michael Moore's last masturbation movie, but the movie isn't really about that. It's also part romantic comedy part character study of a man finding himself. As a result, the comment that the movie is trying to make doesn't last very long and becomes more part of the background then the story. And that's the problematic part of it.

Because it's a character study and a romantic comedy and because the main character is played by George Clooney we like the character. We root for him. Despite the fact he GOES AROUND THE COUNTRY FIRING PEOPLE. Not only that, he doesn't seem at all worry about the ramifications of what he does or care about what he's doing to other people. When you do see him let people go, he doesn't really come off as that good at it. The only time he expresses any issues with what he does is when they bring up the idea of video conferencing the layoffs and he brings up the issue of how it's always better to do it in person but he didn't do it as much for concern with the other person but because it would mean less time on the road. Now compare this with Kendrick's character who eventually can't take it and quits. In other words, she decided to save her soul-- Clooney's character doesn't. Yet we're still supposed to like him and wish for good things to happen to his character at the end of the movie. But this is not how we should feel. Instead, we should be hoping (as I was) that the movie should end with him being disembowled by one of the people he laid off.