Illusions and Recycled Air

The 40 something executive in a customised designer suit who zips through check in, while you wait it out behind the four parent, six screaming kids nightmare of a family returning from a ski vacation. The woman who clocks in sixty thousand odd air miles, managing a career, a family and two children. The hotshot young manager who comes up with a way of cutting 85% of the cost to company, two weeks into her first job. 

Ryan, Alex and Natalie are the key protagonists in the film in writer/director Jason Reitman's "Up in theAir", during the course of which he effortlessly takes these and other hallowed examples of what constitutes a  successful human being in modern society, and manages to get the viewer to see beyond the cliche. - Ryan has lost any semblance of human connect, Alex has "settled", and Natalie hasn't realised that she can't have it all.


Through the course of the film, the characters reveal their cynicism ("Think of me as yourself, only with a vagina" - Alex) and their essence ("How does it not even cross your mind that you might want to have a future with somebody" - Natalie), with effortless wit and irony, and, at it's end, you leave not feeling sorry for any of them, but rather reflecting on (as Ryan would put it) what you, if anything, would really  "put into your backpack before you set fire to it."

There are many metaphors for the decline of substance and real human connection in this film, one of them perhaps is also that it has been pitted with the likes of Avatar in race for the Oscars. While it is unlikely that it will triumph over the flash and dazzle of technology, the money making juggernaut, or the political correctness of other contenders, in itself, it is a quirky little gem, with some great acting (a shoutout to a brilliant Vera Farmiga and a merciful lack of schtick from George Clooney), brilliant writing and the pluck to stick to what filmmaking is all about - that sleight of hand that makes you engage and reflect while thinking that you are being entertained.