There’s No Place Like Home

Up in the Air

Jason Reitman

USA

2009

For him, the air is his home.

In general, I am not a fan of movies based on fiction or novel, or short stories. Literature and film are different media that create dissimilar experiences of art. Almost all of the people I know always say that the book version is better than the film and at extreme and more usual cases that the movie murdered the book. My response would be diplomatic, considering the fact that books and movies are two different practices and along the production of a film comes more than a hundred of cinematic to economic oriented decisions accounting to diversions from the book with of course varying extents. It is undeniable though that there have been a number of great films with adapted screenplays—“Slumdog Millionaire”, “Brokeback Mountain”, “Memoirs of a Geisha” and also undeniable is the fact that there are also disappointing ones. A wonderful book acclimatized to a film will become one that is geared toward the character’s highfaluting and staggering philosophy or campy whimsicalities and the challenge that will confront the director will be the kind of form he will structure the novel. In “Doubt”, the director decided to be minimalist which really many directors would opt to as in a way a kind of preserving the highly-character oriented substance of a book. The most practical and sensible use of this art’s quest for a different medium would be that of a sci-fi or fantasy novel. At least in the popular culture, this is hugely evident like that of “Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter”, and “Twilight”. One of the few moments I am seriously gratified by this shifting of media aside from LOTR trilogy and Harry Potter series is David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. This type of story is one of those who don’t just need to be visual (for all stories ask for its reader’s imagination) instead needs an extreme and arduous visual treatment and interpretation. 

 The many contrast between Bingham and Keener-age, gender, body built, and beliefs still provide a charming chemistry between the two.

The director of Academy Award nominated “Juno”, Jason Reitman comes back with a film adaptation of “Up in the Air”. I wish I have read the foundation novel before I write this but I find the film too overwhelming to contract time. My professors say that a brilliant screenplay even handled by a mediocre director would still result to a brilliant film but a bad screenplay even handled by a Francis Ford Copolla or an Akira Kurosawa would result to no more than the worst works in their entire filmography. The film is script-wise astounding; in fact, I believe almost entire of the film’s compelling force is due to it. Conversely I can not deny the fact that Reitman did not try to make it look so much of a novel-based movie. The director manage to engage playful cuts, independent cutaways, and purposeful and at the same time resourceful montage which is not a normative standard of movies. The rest is not unnecessarily radical nor in any case tries to be a powder keg of a new novel to book filmmaking guidelines. Instead, what he does is a prudent and innovative delivery of making a novel into a cinematic template that is efficiently persuasive of itself as a film and not anymore of any medium. He achieves it by a spanking youth in technical (at least in editing) manipulation and in general transformation of an already fulfilling fiction into a film fit screenplay.

I believe that in any extent Reitman did influence the qualitative amount of interweaving elements from the novel to the film. It is also not too far from believing that he wanted to create more sense of contrasts and variation which is truly commendable because that is the most faithful to the form of cinema that you can do to translate a content from other media.

An amalgam of character-reflective metaphors, character and philosophy clash, dynamic swing of wane and recreation of them, far-fetched twists, and tons of intelligence covered with collected wit describes this stirring tale of life with relationship, dream, and passion at the core. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) works as an employment sheriff. He travels all year long from different cities in the country—Omaha, St. Louis, Wichita, Tulsa, San Francisco, and a lot more. With his new co-worker who is trying to revolutionize their traveling work into a more cost-efficient virtual termination of employment, Ryan is tremendously displeased with her scheme so gearing to the business while directing away the serious psychological effect of the terminated workers which Ryan believes will only be reduced with a person to person communication. There are a lot of differences between Ryan and Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) however it is a joy not see them take it personally. The occurrences where the two are together talking about life and how they argue with their definitions and standards are very exciting. Appealing also is the fact that neither one of them has been favored by life ahead of them. Even Ryan, the main protagonist doesn’t hold the claim of truth or his philosophy as the superior or his beliefs as the closer to life itself, nor does Natalie. Both of them are proven wrong and right at some points by the other. I also find the double twists so enhancing of the watching experience. Ryan decides to follow Alexis and have a chance to have the wife and family he never wanted and then learn that Alexis already has a husband and kids. Few scenes before that, we see Ryan and Alexis having so much of times that conceive a future wedding of their own.Natalie also at the late part of the film seems to have won with her virtual termination scheme and then later on decides to quit the job after learning that a previous terminated employee committed suicide. These twists and twists again crisscross from the two or three main characters in the film structuring an interesting and intricate body of complimenting rudiments. 

 Ryan's sister asked him to take a picture out of cardboard of her and her husband in the places Ryan visits.

This is a metaphor of Ryan's incredulity about marriage.

The worst thing the director could ever do in this film would be appointing actors who will fail to bring these characters with the most ostentatious and rigid words out of their mouth to come to life. It is legal for “Doubt” to brag about the acting component of the film as Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Davis just did not do anything wrong about their assignments. Following such tradition, George Clooney together with supporting role players Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick does a performance so provoking, so pounding like a hammer and most importantly so grasping of empathy. At this point in time of Clooney’s career I never expected anything this appropriate a role for him as much as I don’t anticipate any role that will re-launch the 12-year starvation of Tom Hanks’ career.

“Up in the Air” is one of the most, if not the most engaging Hollywood film last year. Though it is easy to have such riveting nature adapting a screenplay from a novel of Walter Kirn, the film is a satisfying success for its deeply nurturing temperament becomes an experience of lyrical consciousness. It made me feel so alive.