For decades now George Clooney has demonstrated just two extremely effective performance modes: charmingly handsome and seriously handsome. In the latter mode, in films such as Michael Clayton and Good Night, and Good Luck, he can win awards. In the former mode, such as the Ocean’s movies, he can melt hearts. And yet, look closer, and even in his strongest performances he always seems indelibly “George” — ostensibly poised and ready to crack that winning gag, or flash those dreamboat baby browns at a moment’s notice. He is always, in short, being George Clooney.
Which is precisely what makes the satirical Up in the Air such a deliciously self-referential treat, and perhaps even his best movie yet. For here Clooney stars as a corporate assassin, Ryan Bingham, a man who spends 322 days a year in a business-class bubble, flying across America, and firing luckless company employees from soulless strip-lit office blocks. More importantly, Bingham is emotionally cauterised from the real world, and lives his privileged life in a slick, self-created persona (sound familiar?). He believes in elite status, and he gives motivational speeches that warn against developing interpersonal relationships.
Into this world, naturally, march two women who will change Bingham’s life profoundly. One is a terrifying twentysomething corporate pitbull called Natalie (Anna Kendrick), whose 21st- century methodology threatens to reduce Bingham to a desk jockey. The other is the sophisticated Alex (Vera Farmiga), a businesswoman who is allegedly as callous and shallow as Bingham, but one whose growing affection (they spend a weekend in Milwaukee together) might just derail our hero’s innate cynicism.
Of course, coming from Ivan Reitman, the director of Juno and Thank You for Smoking, the film is littered with witty gags and satirical asides on the emptiness of white-collar culture. Bingham’s boss Craig (Jason Bateman), for instance, delivers a fantastically trite lecture on the value of being “glocal”. “Yes, glocal!” he says. “Where our ‘global’ must become ‘local’!”
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And while Farmiga and Kendrick provide some flawless support, this is ultimately Clooney’s film. As Bingham’s suavely conceited façade slowly cracks throughout the movie, Clooney reveals hitherto unexplored actorly depths. He’s stiller and quieter here than he’s ever been. He’s haunted. And he plays his age (“I don’t think of him that way! He’s old!” says Natalie, discussing Bingham).
But best of all, and even despite the musical montage and the slightly obvious plot, Up in the Air makes you believe that this man is finally ready to stop being George Clooney. For now.