Up In The Air leaves its viewers with a hard landing
The young whippersnapper matching wits with two seasoned and weary veterans with a company’s future on the line. Am I thinking of The Bug Kahuna, In Good Company or Up In The Air? All three actually, but it is Up In The Air that has the widest and deepest approval by the cinerati, including an Oscar nomination for Best Motion Picture.
All three movies have their flaws but the over wrought Kahuna more so than the other two. In Good Company is far more visual than the talkative Up In The Air (which at one stretch reminded me of Before Sunrise) but the mini Romeo and Juliette romance in it is a bit manufactured, and there’s also an almost bizarre workplace confrontation between the protagonist and the corporations globalist CEO.
Up In The Air earned most of its buzz and emotional punch from what really is a sideshow, namely the hardship caused by the mass layoffs during the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a middle aged workplace separation specialist whose job is to inform his clients’ employees that their positions are no longer available. Bingham describes himself as the man who does the job bosses are too scared to do themselves, but I suppose one can argue that he also helps companies right-size their workforces (to use a eupheism that was popular several years ago) without needlessly provoking lawsuits because of some middle manager’s emotional babbling. In other words, he’s compensating for incompetence as much as cowardice.
The kind of termination service that Bingham and his employees provide are mostly used by corporation since they are expensive. In addition to the actual termination they also provide so-called career transition or outplacement services. Wholly useless services, of course. I imagine companies use them in an attempt to distract the laid-off workers for a few months.
Having been laid-off twice I suppose I have gained some exposure to Bingham’s line of work, although in both cases the terminations were handled internally and only in one case did my severance package include outplacement services.
Layoffs create quite a bit of fear and anxiety and it’s common for the directly and indirectly affected to lash out against how the terminations happened.
I don’t think there is a good way to end a person’s career. Some ways are likely better than others, but in the end it is the end.
In my case it happened in similar ways but under different circumstances. The first time it was a long-anticipated day of figurative blood letting during which the culled were called in to their manager’s office one at a time. There was no bullshit or sugar coating, just the rueful passing of the news and matter-of-factly information about the severance package. I was given the opportunity to express my feelings, presumably meant as a catharsis for the terminated. I simply stated that I understood company’s situation, options and ultimate decision.
After the brief meeting I was given 15 minutes to gather up my belongings and say goodbyes before another manager walked me out of the building to the parking lot. The company had hired two armed off-duty police officers in case things went awry but as far as I know their were like mine: not required.
I don’t know how the company could have done it better, but there were still tears spilled, and, surely mutterings of “I can’t believe they…”
The severance package was rather generous by industry standards and included, yes, several months of career transition assistance. What a load that was. It was basically an exercise in resume writing, the kind of inane stuff that you can find on countless so-called garbitrage web sites that display an astounding number of Google AdSense ads on each page. They also had a database with current job openings. Like Monster.com. What a waste of money (but maybe not time since I had to conduct my job search somewhere).
But it’s one thing be laid off when you’re 32 and work in an expanding industry. It surely must be a whole different kind of ball game when you’re in that precarious limbo after you’ve passed hireable age (50-55) but before Social Security and or pension eligibility, and you work in a declining industry that basically has no particular need for your skills, or, if it does, can acquire those skills for half the cost. It is rarely easy to recoup one’s earnings potential after getting the boot. It must be desperately difficult in that situation.
That desperation is what gives Up In The Air its gravitas. Most of the faces of laid off people in the movie are actually amateurs who themselves had been laid off. But it is a true professional – JK Simmons – who delivers the performance that allows Clooney to showcase Bingham’s brilliant con arstistry. Bingham manages to make the ageing, just terminated employee feel victimized not by his termination but by the preceding years of employment. Termination becomes liberation. At least for that fleeting moment and that’s all Bingham needs.
But Bingham is not only a professional corporate Grim Reaper, he is a also frequent flier-miles junky. He flies so much that his nominal home is a one bedroom apartment that means nothing to him. When asked during during a plane ride where he is from his answer is a plain “here.” His goal is to become a member of his chosen airline’s 10 million miles club, which has only six members. His journey to the milestone is aided by high-end rewards-club memberships he is already in possession of thanks to his nearly non-stop travelling.
Oddly, Bingham also fancies himself a motivational speaker. While the typical motivationbal speaker seeks to convince his listerners that they can become wealthy and popular, maybe even rich and famous, if they only unleash their inner awesomeness, Bingham tells his audiences get rid of their material belongings and cut loose from all personal relationship. That’s not motivational speaking, that’s the lunatic ravings of a cult leader.
The parallel between the detachment of Bingham’s personal life and the detachment he foists upon others in his professional life are painfully obvious yet hammered into the viewer over and over in tedious dialouges.
Much like the seasoned sales manager in In Good Company has his corporate existence threatened by a young go-getter Bingham has his world turned upside down by a young woman with a degree from Cornell.
The screenplay places their company’s headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, to where she moves to follow her boyfriend from college. Apparently unable to get a job with Warren Buffet or Jeremy Shoemaker she signs on with Bingham’s career transition company where she promptly sets out to make waves.
Her pitch is that the company should centralize its operations and fire people over the Internet, thus bringing an end to Bingham’s aero-nomadic lifestyle. Who will prevail?
You probably won’t care because the movie veers wildly off track after a strong start. The bluff upon which the movie’s hype is built is called. The whole business about getting axed from one’s job is just a sideshow. The real story is about loneliness, whether its Bingham’s self-elected solo-journey under the stars or his young colleague’s unsolicited loneliness after she’s dumped.
That’s not particularly interesting and that part of the movie isn’t particularly well made. It is a bit of a mystery to me how Up In The Air landed as much praise as it did.
