UP IN THE AIR

Written by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner
Directed by Jason Reitman
Starring George Clooney, Anna Kendrick, Vera Farmiga and Jason Bateman


Ryan Bingham: To know me is to fly with me. This is where I live.

It isn’t as easy as you might think but writer/director, Jason Reitman has managed to make it into the mile high club on just his third attempt. Though the Oscar-nominated director is still a novice by most standard definitions of the word, his latest, UP IN THE AIR, soars with such grace and ease that you would think he has been piloting these birds for ages now. Sure he has the familial pedigree in his back pocket (Daddy’s name is Ivan, in case you didn’t know) but it is his personal track record that continues to impress. His debut, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING was well, smoking; and his follow-up, JUNO, made him one of the most sought after directors of the day. He is taking a decidedly more adult flight path with his return and, though I appreciated the maturity he brought to the teenage world of JUNO, I am happy to see UP IN THE AIR is an adult-only flight.


Upon take-off, Reitman takes us straight to the skies. In fact, all you can hear is the serene sound of nothing but air as you glide above the clouds. When you look down, you see the states from above, accompanied by a funked out version of “This Land Is Your Land”. Looking down on the land, it looks so pristine and lustrous. The orderly lines that divide the grounds and the huddled masses of tall buildings look to provide a solid structure in which to foster those American dreams everyone is always talking about. But when the plane lands, it becomes pretty clear pretty quick that life on the ground is an illusion to those looking down on it. On the ground, America is crumbling. People are losing their jobs, their security and their hope. This is where “he” comes in …


A passenger on this flight and our humbled protagonist, is George Clooney, I mean, Ryan Bingham. I get them confused because they both seem to be aging players who have refused their entire lives to ever being weighed down by anything or anyone. Clooney of course is one of the most famous bachelors on the planet. Ryan may not be famous but he is famous to those who do know him for keeping himself up in the air, if you will, as often as he can. Ryan travels across the United States and fires people for a living. He shows up at an office and calls people he has never met in one by one to tell them that their position no longer exists because these companies don’t have the decency to do it themselves. When he isn’t telling people that they no longer have the means to support their families, he moonlights as a motivational speaker who insists that families are life’s biggest trap.


Ryan is still a likeable guy despite all these things. He doesn’t get off on firing people; it is just how he makes his living and it affords him the lifestyle that suits him best. Another reason he endears is because Clooney plays him so smoothly. You could say it isn’t much of a stretch for him but playing Ryan and going through everything he does means seeing a Clooney that is finally accepting his own mortality and questioning what kind of meaning his later years will hold for him. When his boss (Jason Bateman) informs him that his job may become locally executed, Ryan realizes that his grounding means that life will finally stop moving at 500 miles an hour. Meanwhile, the girl he is showing the professional ropes to (Anna Kendrick) reminds him of what it means to be young and how to believe in the possibilities people offer and the woman he is romantically roped up with (Vera Farmiga) suddenly seems like that possibility.


UP IN THE AIR may touch on some fairly contrived topics and set itself in an all too timely milieu but with Reitman in the captain’s chair, the flight is completely turbulence free. Reitman has crafted a poignant reflection on where America is right now, in terms of the economy and their value system, that is always insightful and never judgmental. He pulls performances from his cast that are so fine in their restraint and their candidness. He puts it all together with style and finesse and, by taking to the lofty skies, he cements himself as a great modern storyteller. Perhaps most importantly, in what is so often called the darkest period America has had to face in years, Reitman somehow pays homage to how trying it all is while reminding us that it is also perfectly acceptable to laugh.

Black Sheep Previews: UP IN THE AIR

You might have seen this already but I wanted to throw it up here as I had the chance to catch the whole thing at TIFF last week. Director, Jason Reitman, has only made three feature films to date - JUNO and THANK YOU FOR SMOKING before this - and his latest, UP IN THE AIR, proves that he is a director with a clear vision and a concise approach to storytelling. His pictures are always crisp and clean and, while that may turn off some looking for rougher edges, I find it only allows for the details and the subtleties to break through.

UP IN THE AIR stars George Clooney as a modern day nomad. He has a one-bedroom apartment in Omaha but he ordinarily spends less than 50 days a year there. His home lies somewhere between the airports he flies to and the hotels he stays in. Clooney brings his own life into the picture for this eternal bachelor character and the supporting cast - Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick and Jason Bateman - are all excellent characters unto themselves, hence redefining the term "supporting".

UP IN THE AIR will certainly generate a lot of buzz this coming awards season and rightfully so. Look for it in theatres this December.

THE DEPARTED

Written by William Monahan
Directed by Martin Scorcese

This is it, folks. It’s the one you’ve all been waiting for. It is a true return to form, style and relevance. It has been all too easy, almost expected, to laud Martin Scorcese pictures with praise in recent years. The man has talent and has crafted some of cinema’s landmark films, from TAXI DRIVER to GOODFELLAS. The industry was naming his last picture, THE AVIATOR, the film of the year. That seemed exaggerated, an all too safe a thing to say. To name the same of his previous epic mess, GANGS OF NEW YORK, was even more absurd. There seemed to be regret for not crowning him king earlier for more deserving efforts. The later pity praise felt apologetic instead of congratulatory. The films themselves felt manufactured for mass appeal, devoid of personal involvement and often a courting of industry acceptance. This time is different. This time Scorcese feels concise and calculated, like a man with a purpose, focus. This time Scorcese has left his hopes for accolades behind him and engineered his own cinematic rebirth. This time Scorcese says goodbye to his past and embraces THE DEPARTED.

Borrowing its intricately woven story from the 2002 Japanese film, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, THE DEPARTED stars Leonardo Dicaprio and Matt Damon as moles infiltrating both sides of a war between the law and organized crime. Dicaprio plays Billy Costigan, a Boston State Policeman with a family history entrenched in crime. As he is trying to make a new name for his family, he is thrown back into the world he worked so hard to escape. Costigan will go undercover and make his way into the confidence of Boston’s biggest crime boss, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Costello, meanwhile, has his own man on the inside of the Boston State Police, Colin Sullivan (Damon). Sullivan was brought under Costello’s wing when he was just a boy who was doing well in school. Both Costigan and Sullivan sought power. Costigan’s power lied in authority and changing his apparent destiny through hard work. Sullivan was seduced by a different kind of power. He still had to work hard but he had the muscle to back him up when he needed it. Dicaprio’s and Damon’s solid performances heighten the tension and make for insightful character studies. As Costigan, Dicaprio is anxious and unstable. Pretending to be a brute with nothing to live for and no reason to do bad other than it being his genetic makeup goes against everything he’s ever struggled with. His eyes flare up and his whole body flinches every time he is around intense violence; he never seems to get used to it. As Sullivan, Damon is a confident, cocky liar who gets off on how many people he’s fooling and just how well he is fooling them, from his colleagues on the force (a supporting cast consisting of Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin) to his psychiatrist girlfriend, Madolyn (the relatively unknown and engaging Vera Farmiga). When it becomes apparent that both teams have been permeated, the game to catch the rat becomes tenser the closer each gets to figuring the other out. Amidst growing suspicion and fear of getting caught, THE DEPARTED becomes unpredictable and entrancing.


The surprisingly layered performance of Nicholson as Costello is one of THE DEPARTED’s best features. I expected that Nicholson could pull off a mob boss in his sleep but he brings experience and the effects of time to the role. Like one would expect, one doesn’t become a mob boss from being a nice guy. Costello is evil right through. He finds amusement in how a body slumps over to the side instead of forward when he blows a bullet through the back of her head. He has grown accustomed to getting everything he wants, to having no one stand in his way. To some extent though, he has grown bored and complacent with this lifestyle. He knows of nothing else but knows that alternatives exist. He seems to live his life appreciative of his position but with regret, or at least an awareness, that he did not make other decisions. When he speaks of Costigan’s father as a guy who could have been a big boss if he wanted to but didn’t, the acknowledgment alone highlights the power of choice. When he tells Costigan that he should go back to school, it highlights his own choices.

Something Costello is fond of saying is that “No one gives it to you; you have to take it.” It is a mantra for Costello and it seems like one for Scorcese as well regarding his approach to this film. Scorcese’s command of THE DEPARTED can be felt in the composition of each shot, in the energy of the omnipresent soundtrack and the grasp of the subject matter. Like Costello, Scorcese has been coasting in recent years; the results have been passable, at times solid, but always tired. THE DEPARTED announces Scorcese’s return to making affirmative choices again, and the right one’s at that.