‘The airplane movie I’ll watch every time’: why Up in the Air is my favorite movie | Up in the air

AAirports have become my favorite places. From the glittering cabins rising out of the desert to the sprawling European estates 120 kilometers outside the city they have been chosen to serve; I love them all. With so many stories to tell, all the connections and human collisions, it’s the highest seat to life itself. Which should explain why I love the 2009 comedy so much Up in the air.

Directed by Jason Reitman and based on the novel of the same name by Walter Kirn, it starred Oscar nominees. George Clooney like Ryan Bingham, a US corporate downsizer who spends 322 days a year flying to work in fear his employers choose to stay abroad, leaving him with “43 miserable days at home”. That is until graduate Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) joins the company with the idea of ​​saving money on video evictions, and hits the road with an older friend, who is suddenly forced to confront the future of her industry while reassessing her nomadic life.

Clooney’s hatchet man is approaching a distance of 10m on a regular basis – which he happily reveals has been achieved by fewer people than those who have set foot on the moon – and has managed to control the plane down to an exact science: changing his airplane Concierge Key as Patrick Bateman can have a business card, and rolling (the airport is a good take-off suit) the passenger who carries the security trays conviction. It’s contagious to look at, honestly.

In my early twenties (the time this film was released) I often traveled to faraway places on someone else’s dime, preferring lonely reservoirs, fun work and temporary relationships abroad to any senior role at home in London’s corrupt market. Even though I was twenty years younger than its central character, Up in the Air connected with me in such a way that I watched the film religiously on those trips, showing it on every possible device for the extra hits. It remains the airplane video I will watch anytime, anywhere; or listen, why…

What keeps me coming back to this movie isn’t the drive – it’s the heart. For all his volunteerism, Bingham is the most compassionate when he’s on the clock. The Fortune 500’s answer to Freddy Krueger at least tries to get along with the workers he leaves behind, cutting cows if necessary and reminding Kendrick’s eager bee that in this line of work he is facing people on the worst day of their lives. Dismissing people from far away, he tells him, is wrong at any level (this from a guy who accuses him of living in a “restrictive chest”, but above all he has no real job to take care of – and as we get closer to the workplace controlled by great AI, I find this message more popular than ever.

Another plot that touches the heart is Bingham’s love affair with a successful businesswoman, played by Vera Farmiga. Spirits of color? Not really. Towards the end of the film, she unexpectedly goes to her house to realize that their love story has been going on like a maid service when she sees signs of a husband and children on the front door. Clooney’s voice staring as he drives back to Chicago on a snowy night never fails to bring me down.

And there is a happy ending – not for the reasons you might think. The most interesting aspect of the film is Reitman’s decision to cast real people who had just been laid off, instructing them to speak to the camera crew as they would to their employers, giving an unfiltered picture of the victims on the front lines of the recession. The director found these talking points when trying to make a documentary – and it really shows, feeling part of the HBO doc and part of the episode of NBC The Office as real faces (and tears) are mixed together with the performances of the stars from what JK Simmons and Zach Galifianakis, as employees who bite the dust.

Throughout, these very words change from public anger to frustration and even hope, reminding us how unbreakable the human spirit can be. In fact, by the end of the video you will find it so inspiring that you may have the desire to set up a tray table.

• Up in the Air is available on Kanopy or Hoopla, digital rental in the US, on YouTube, digital rental in the UK and digital rental in Australia