but this is beside the point.
the point is that the film was interesting, but not in the way i expected. quirksome? yes. topical? yes. Clooney's signature je ne sais quoi? oui. what grabbed me, however, was the odd collision - and sometimes collusion - of its economic and metaphysical themes.
on the one hand, i couldn't help but be underwhelmed by the film's heavy-handed treatment of the economy. an early sequence near the start of the film had me hopeful, when a montage of Clooney at the security checkpoint augmented the mechanistic efficiency of the whole process. it referenced (obliquely) the underlying mode of production, and i crossed my fingers waiting to see how this tendency would be developed - it wasn't.
instead of Marx, the film proceeded to unveil two hours of quasi-populist tripe. the economic system that produced these inequities disappeared almost entirely, subsumed by Clooney's star persona and the Heteromance of Ryan and Alex. thankfully, i was still able to evoke some sense of empathy for the nameless office employees laid off by the handsome man from out of town and, later, his bitchily naive Ivy League sidekick:
this was one of the biggest drawbacks.
on the other hand, the treatment of gender was atrocious, and the Anna Kendrick subplot was little more than a distasteful mélange of postfeminism and bildungsroman, with the dumb doe-eyed girl passing on her own career for a boy in Tulsa, only to be rescued in the end by emotionally unavailable patriarch who helps her reclaim her dreams while simultaneously protecting her from the disillusionment of the professional down-sizer.
likewise, the near-miss romance between Clooney and Vera Farmiga was rewarding only in that it didn't bring them together. her duplicity makes itself known in the final reel, and the audience is coerced into feeling sorry for the man who tried to love but could not:
this was the saving grace.
in spite of its best efforts, Up in the Air has nothing to do with the economy. it says nothing about materiality or the complexities and contradiction of late capitalism - can we even call it that any more? - the film as a parable:
his bag is empty.
he is a cog. he is a spoke.
the prayerful emptiness of longing.
the machine of capital. the wheel of karma.
the people he fires are not even his own.
he lives in planes. he lives in airports.
he is groundless. he has no mother.
he yearns for his existence.
he chases the arbitrary.
he has transcended.
he is a cog. he is a spoke.
the prayerful emptiness of longing.
the machine of capital. the wheel of karma.
the people he fires are not even his own.
he lives in planes. he lives in airports.
he is groundless. he has no mother.
he yearns for his existence.
he chases the arbitrary.
he has transcended.
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