In a year when the Oscar race has no 600-pound gorilla in the room, Up
in the Air has been touted as a Best Picture candidate. I'm not sure how I
feel about that. On the one hand, the film is supremely slick and it does
have some depth underneath its brightly polished veneer. In that respect,
the film is a reflection of its lead actor, Hollywood's designated silver
fox, George Clooney: gleaming, glib, smooth, in control, with just enough
vulnerability to imply that it's more than a pretty face. If there were an
Oscar division for the products with the best packaging, Clooney would win
every year, and Up in the Air would be a champion.
But he doesn't and it isn't.
In fact, for 93 minutes it is a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy lifted
somewhat above average by its fine cast and its willingness to take on a
heavy theme (the pain of losing one's job). Then at minute 94 it takes a
dramatic and daring turn and defies all of our expectations. In fact, I
was close to giving the film a standing ovation at minute 94, but before I
could leave my seat, I realized that the screenwriter didn't know what to
do with his brilliant and bold plot twist. The last ten minutes of the
film just wander off into nowhere, sort of pretending that several of the
film's key developments had never happened at all, dazed like a
prizefighter after a hard head shot.
So here's what Up in the Air would be like if it were a person. It's
the jock who decides that he's not going to spend his life chasing after a
little ball, but instead he's going to go back to the dream that made him
happy. He's going to try to write the great American novel and spend time
with his family. We are moved by his story. We stand up and applaud him
for walking away from all that money and fame to do the right thing for
his wife and kids, and for himself. But then he disappoints us. He tries,
and he just can't do it. He's a bad writer and a sub-par husband and
father. The only thing he's good at is playing ball, and when he was doing
that he at least had some focus in life. Now that he has quit, he's not
good at anything. He walks around dazed, like a prizefighter after a hard
head shot.
In other words, it's not enough to come up with one brilliant plot
twist which subverts the genre conventions. You also have to know what
would happen to your characters in case that twist actually happened to
them. Or if you don't know, at least come up with a hypothesis. Don't just
end the movie with everyone walking around like a dazed boxer.
After having boldly declared that Up in the Air should not be a Best
Picture winner, let me mitigate that position just a bit. First of all,
George Clooney is magnificent at being completely charming while playing
an essentially odious character. Since Cary Grant retired there has
probably been no other actor in the business who could make us like and
feel empathy for the man who is delivering the lines Clooney has to
deliver in this film. And since I'm saying Clooney is the only actor in
the world who could have pulled this off, I guess I'm also saying that he
is a legitimate Oscar candidate. And although Up in the Air should not
really be playing in the Best Picture League, it is still a worthwhile
film. It's not very deep or very smart, but it's deep and smart enough to
realize that its first 93 minutes could easily have led to a bullshit
ending, so it did not go there. That alone makes it worth the time
invested in it.
If only it could have replaced the bullshit Hollywood ending with some
other ending, as opposed to no ending at all.
