In the first few moments of “Up in the Air” we see a montage of people who have just been fired as they react to the news. They express their emotions. They talk about their track record, their history with the company, their loyalty, and their service. They are responding to Ryan Bingham and the news that he has brought them, the news that they are fired. Ryan Bingham works for a company that is hired by people who don’t have the backbone to do the firing themselves. So, regardless of the loyalty that these employees have shown, regardless of the amount of time that they have worked for the company, they are shown the door and offered a moderate severance package.
Ryan has come up with a more “personal” method of “letting people go.” He always offers them the encouragement that, “Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are right now. And it’s because they sat there that they were able to do it.” He also tells them, “This is not an assessment of your productivity. Try not to take this personally.”
Ryan’s life is on the road, in hotels and rental cars. He spends 322 days on the road to avoid anything more than the 43 miserable days that he has to spend at his institutional apartment in Omaha, Nebraska. He has fallen out of touch with his family, his parents are deceased, and he is coming to his sister’s wedding as a guest, not a family member. He’s never been married himself because he’s never seen the point. Ryan will only invest in things that will benefit him, in life and in business. He is surrounded by people every day, but he is alone.
Although he’s alone, he is loyal. Ryan prides himself on his loyalty. When he reaches into his wallet, instead of family pictures, he pulls out frequent flyer cards, loyal customer cards, frequent renter cards, and an assortment of cards that indicate to the world that he has been dedicated to these companies and he fully deserves all of the perks that he receives from them.
“Up in the Air” is a movie about relationships and loyalty. It’s a movie that calls to question the things in which we invest our lives. What do we have to show for those investments? Ryan says that relationships are the heaviest things in our lives and if we carry them, they slow us down. “The slower we move, the faster we die.” Over the course of the movie, Ryan connects with a woman named Alex who seems to have chosen the same lifestyle as he has. They compare their loyal customer cards the way others would compare pictures of their children and family. They begin an informal and convenient relationship that Ryan eventually wants to take to the next level.
After being chastised by Natalie Keener, a young Cornell graduate who is single-handedly upending his company’s business approach which results in a threat to Ryan’s lifestyle, he realizes that he wants something more in his relationship with Alex. He makes his way to her home in Chicago to see her and we come to what I feel is the most ironic event in the film. Ryan is faced with the fact that he has finally allowed himself to be emotionally vulnerable only to find that he was just “an escape, a break from our normal lives, a parentheses.” The woman to which he had connected with over loyalty has shattered him he finds that his standard of loyalty has not been returned.
In the last few moments of the film we see Ryan standing before the departures board at the airport. He has diverted from his path, but it has ultimately become just an escape and parentheses from the life that he now chooses to go back to: a disconnected life. The movie ends in the manner in which it began, with a montage of interviews from the very same people who had been fired. This time they are talking about how they were able to get through. They talk about their friends and their families and how important they are to them. If they hadn’t had that support structure in place, they never would have made it.
“Up in the Air” is a movie that haunted me every moment after I had seen it for the first time. It speaks to our non-committal culture and generation. It presents us with two very different kinds of loyalty: loyalty to yourself and loyalty to the people who love you. Our lives are full of choices, every decision can be made with ourselves in mind or with the people who love us in mind. What are we loyal to? Who are we loyal to? When the chips come down, if we find ourselves jobless or homeless, will we be friendless and abandoned as well? Despite the heaviness of the relationships in our lives and the fact that they might slow us down, are they worth it?
In another ironic moment in the film, Ryan is charged with speaking some sense into his sister’s fiancé who has called off their wedding. This man who has never made the commitment of marriage needs to convince someone that it’s the right thing to do. To me, it was this turning point more than his encounter with Natalie that drove Ryan to pursue Alex the way that he did. He asks his future brother-in-law about all of the important memories and events in his life and asks whether he was alone or not. Ryan realizes what a lonely existence that he has had.
The movie isn’t saying that we need to be married to be happy, but it is saying that we need relationships, with family, with friends. Those relationships need to be deeper than just “hello.” True relationships are an investment. We expend time, energy, money, and resources on our relationships and we have to determine whether or not we think it’s worth it. Personally, I wouldn’t trade the relationships and friendships that I have more all the money in the world. No amount of frequent flyer miles or loyal customer points could ever compare with flesh and blood and raw emotion.
What about you? Are your relationships important to you? Are you investing in the things that matter or things that will just make you temporarily happy? I always tell my wife that we’re better together. We try to do things alone, but when we team up, it always ends up better than if we had done it on our own. To quote LOST, “Live together. Die alone.”
Ryan has come up with a more “personal” method of “letting people go.” He always offers them the encouragement that, “Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are right now. And it’s because they sat there that they were able to do it.” He also tells them, “This is not an assessment of your productivity. Try not to take this personally.”
Ryan’s life is on the road, in hotels and rental cars. He spends 322 days on the road to avoid anything more than the 43 miserable days that he has to spend at his institutional apartment in Omaha, Nebraska. He has fallen out of touch with his family, his parents are deceased, and he is coming to his sister’s wedding as a guest, not a family member. He’s never been married himself because he’s never seen the point. Ryan will only invest in things that will benefit him, in life and in business. He is surrounded by people every day, but he is alone.
Although he’s alone, he is loyal. Ryan prides himself on his loyalty. When he reaches into his wallet, instead of family pictures, he pulls out frequent flyer cards, loyal customer cards, frequent renter cards, and an assortment of cards that indicate to the world that he has been dedicated to these companies and he fully deserves all of the perks that he receives from them.
“Up in the Air” is a movie about relationships and loyalty. It’s a movie that calls to question the things in which we invest our lives. What do we have to show for those investments? Ryan says that relationships are the heaviest things in our lives and if we carry them, they slow us down. “The slower we move, the faster we die.” Over the course of the movie, Ryan connects with a woman named Alex who seems to have chosen the same lifestyle as he has. They compare their loyal customer cards the way others would compare pictures of their children and family. They begin an informal and convenient relationship that Ryan eventually wants to take to the next level.
After being chastised by Natalie Keener, a young Cornell graduate who is single-handedly upending his company’s business approach which results in a threat to Ryan’s lifestyle, he realizes that he wants something more in his relationship with Alex. He makes his way to her home in Chicago to see her and we come to what I feel is the most ironic event in the film. Ryan is faced with the fact that he has finally allowed himself to be emotionally vulnerable only to find that he was just “an escape, a break from our normal lives, a parentheses.” The woman to which he had connected with over loyalty has shattered him he finds that his standard of loyalty has not been returned.
In the last few moments of the film we see Ryan standing before the departures board at the airport. He has diverted from his path, but it has ultimately become just an escape and parentheses from the life that he now chooses to go back to: a disconnected life. The movie ends in the manner in which it began, with a montage of interviews from the very same people who had been fired. This time they are talking about how they were able to get through. They talk about their friends and their families and how important they are to them. If they hadn’t had that support structure in place, they never would have made it.
“Up in the Air” is a movie that haunted me every moment after I had seen it for the first time. It speaks to our non-committal culture and generation. It presents us with two very different kinds of loyalty: loyalty to yourself and loyalty to the people who love you. Our lives are full of choices, every decision can be made with ourselves in mind or with the people who love us in mind. What are we loyal to? Who are we loyal to? When the chips come down, if we find ourselves jobless or homeless, will we be friendless and abandoned as well? Despite the heaviness of the relationships in our lives and the fact that they might slow us down, are they worth it?
In another ironic moment in the film, Ryan is charged with speaking some sense into his sister’s fiancé who has called off their wedding. This man who has never made the commitment of marriage needs to convince someone that it’s the right thing to do. To me, it was this turning point more than his encounter with Natalie that drove Ryan to pursue Alex the way that he did. He asks his future brother-in-law about all of the important memories and events in his life and asks whether he was alone or not. Ryan realizes what a lonely existence that he has had.
The movie isn’t saying that we need to be married to be happy, but it is saying that we need relationships, with family, with friends. Those relationships need to be deeper than just “hello.” True relationships are an investment. We expend time, energy, money, and resources on our relationships and we have to determine whether or not we think it’s worth it. Personally, I wouldn’t trade the relationships and friendships that I have more all the money in the world. No amount of frequent flyer miles or loyal customer points could ever compare with flesh and blood and raw emotion.
What about you? Are your relationships important to you? Are you investing in the things that matter or things that will just make you temporarily happy? I always tell my wife that we’re better together. We try to do things alone, but when we team up, it always ends up better than if we had done it on our own. To quote LOST, “Live together. Die alone.”
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