"Up in the Air" Stars the Unemployed

by Leigh Graham · 2010-01-04 16:26:00 UTC
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Director Jason Reitman is getting a lot of press for his recently released film, Up in the Air, in which the lead character willingly embraces the anonymity of a life in the skies (and its frequent flier spoils) as he criss-crosses the country firing people for a living. Part of the buzz is that, rather than hire actors for the scenes in which George Clooney's you'll-never-see-me-again character Ryan Bingham fires employees, Reitman used residents of Detroit and St. Louis who'd recently lost their jobs. (Detroit, famous again, for all the wrong reasons.) Reitman and critics alike claim this gives the movie a needed authenticity and sobriety, considering its subject matter and our current economic reality.

I saw Up in the Air this weekend (at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA, which offers free movies to the unemployed on Thursdays) and enjoyed it. I can't get the images of wintry and bleak Detroit and St. Louis out of my head. But I wish I hadn't known about the use of unemployed workers.

I'm happy for them that they got a paycheck for their work (I'm assuming), that they had a chance to meet one another, and that ideally this will open up some opportunities for them or give them some restored sense of self-worth or purpose. Or just a bit of fun. But the unemployed characters are ultimately used as tools to reflect back on Bingham's and his privileged colleague's own personal growth. Just as I'd choke up watching someone fall apart on screen about losing their job and how he was going to face his family, the camera would revert back to Bingham's blank face or his mentee's troubled one. I get that they might have trouble sleeping tonight (or not, as the case may be), but this plot device bordered on exploitative to me.

Of course, had actors been hired, moviegoers might have wondered, hey, wouldn't it have been cool if people who'd really just been fired could have played those parts? Reitman's effort is a good one, even if motivated by self-consciousness over writing a snarky movie about emotional aloofness in which others' misfortune is the context. But I actually don't feel like I got all that much of a message about our "unemployment epidemic" so much as learned that hey, emotional intimacy is hard. No kidding!

If you've seen the movie, let us know what you think.

(Photo from St. Louis, MO by exothermic)

Leigh Graham
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