Job Loving Movie Review: Up in the Air

Tonight's show was Up in the Air, featuring George Clooney as a guy who happily flies around from city to city, living in hotels (he was home only '43 miserable days' one year!), for his job, which requires him to show up at companies and fire people.

I feel a great love for my job right now, both by comparison with that job (I would seriously hate that job), and by comparison with the people in the movie who get fired, many of whom are given the opportunity to express their feelings about it.

We learn from this, in case we didn't know or couldn't imagine, that losing your job sucks. The movie finds some dark humor in the situation, but doesn't gloss too heavily over that basic fact, and I appreciated that it didn't try to pretend everything is all peaches and roses for everyone.

There was some nifty technology involved, since the main character's company is thinking about moving to a remote, teleconferencing sort of model (telefiring?) that would mean he wouldn't get to travel anymore.

The movie brings in interesting ideas about the way this sort of remote communication can work. It's less personal in a way, and can let us get away with things we're afraid to say to someone's face (being broken up with via text message is still seen as pretty low) but it can also allow for more contact (you can send someone sexy text messages when you're both lying awake in different cities).

Is this new, flow-chart-managed, videoconferencing business the wave of the future for mass firings, or does it not quite work? What do we lose when we make these switches? Is hiring a total stranger to physically come to your office and fire your employees less reprehensible than hiring one to do it from a computer screen?

Given the notable lack of libraries and medical themes, the technology was what mostly tied this to the nominal subject of my blog, and I liked it.

I also liked the movie for not getting too sappy. A lot of characters are given a chance to make their various points, and many of the points are good and well phrased. I felt I had room to think them over for myself, without the movie really beating me over the head with one specific takeaway message, like "family is the most important thing in the world" or "sacrificing everything for love is the way to go" (or, alternatively, "family is a bunch of weirdos you try to get away from," or "ditch that deadweight lover and pursue a high stakes career or you're nothing").

Overall, I quite enjoyed this film. There was a lot of fun dialogue, nicely acted, in an interesting story.

Wow. That was hardly grouchy at all. My movie reviews are getting way off track.
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