But this film left me intrigued days later albeit must admit that it had been playing on my mind quite often.
'Up in the air' is a smart movie with nice blend of humor and harsh reality of the today's dehumanizing economic situation that we are all part of. George Clooney(Mr.Ryan Bingham) is the monster manager hired by big companies to fire people, a damn atrocious job - being downsizing manager(in simple words, hired to screw employees' happiness);all he is ambitious about is to join the elite goup of the few 10 million milers(Sophisticated Clooney does the best justice to this role, of course! :) )
Enters Natalie, a young enthusiastic tech-savvy woman who thinks has a better idea to do Mr.Bingham's job - fire people via video conferencing. This approach not only adds on to the top of an already cold-hearted job out there but also slims Bingham's chances towards his dream goal of racking up more flier-miles which enforces him to convince that her idea is not the way it is gonna work by taking her along to fly with him across many places in US to give her the up,close and personal experience of the job. And as Bingham says in the movie 'To know me is to fly with me'! so off goes Natalie with him.
Another strong character in the movie is the intelligent business woman named Alex whom he happens to meet and she effortlessly matches his fancied status and one of the best part in the movie is their introductory scene,when both of them are seen flaunting their respective cards,one after the other to brag of their member-only privileges!!
These are three main characters of the movie and back to the interesting line,Mr.Bingham; who also sometimes goes around delivering 'motivational' speeches to corporates of how to pack all the important stuff of one's life in a backpack, the stuff here being the relationships and emotions :) - one of the intriguing part in the movie!And what he tells about this 'stuff' is, that it is an excessive baggage in one's life that has to be relieved off.But he unknowingly ends up with one such 'stuff' with Alex and when he eventually realizes that he has lost it, he gets back or probably reminds himself that he belongs 'Up in the air'. This seems to me like how much ever we try to relieve the backpack, getting in that deep water is very much innate to our human nature.
And another amusing part is the fine-woven conjunction where inspite of his claim that he belongs 'Up in the Air', he actually realizes that he could once even miss piling up his precious flier miles to actually stay grounded but is anyway disappointed,so back he goes to his alleged place - is it just an escapade from the compelling experience that he was quite obviously bound to feel?
Like Bingham mentions once, can he just burn his backpack 'stuffed' with all the important things in one's life and walk away undaunted!?
How long can he just hang in 'Up in the Air' or can he actually belong there forever like his home?
Or are all the 'stuff' in our lives-from relationship to jobs, just short-lived like being 'Up in the Air'? :)
