UP In The Air - Escape from the Eternal to the Ephemeral
'Up in the Air' has an interesting script, though much of it were clichés. It also has an interesting storyline with at least one unexpected twist. It is said to be a kind of a romantic comedy, but I did not find anything romantic enough or funny about it. It does not have a ‘lived happily ever after ending’. It does not leave one teary eyed either. There is nothing in the movie that causes your heart to melt in tender love. All it does is, it leaves you with a mild gnawing of the heart that is staring into a void looking for some glimmer of real love. What I find atrocious about the movie is that there isn't even the slightest regret or pity for the lack of real love in the movie. But then movies are a reflection of real life.
George Clooney plays Ryan, whose worldview is driven by the idea that to be free of burden of family ties and close relationships is the best way to enjoy life. He is motivation speaker who is known for his lectures on liberating people from the’ burdensome’ ties of relationships. Having relinquished the ties with his family, he lives much of his life in hotels, airport lobbies and aero planes. His cherished goal in life is to reach 10 Million miles of flying and is always willing to bed any woman who is available. Vera Farmiga plays Alex, who is a frequent flying corporate consultant who claims that she does not mind having sex even in toilets of regional flights during day time. The two meet in an airport lounge and click instantly. They don’t miss an opportunity to get in bed whenever their flying schedules criss-cross.
Then there is George Clooney's assistant Natalie played by Anna Kendrick, who is dumped by her boyfriend through a text message and is dejected in having lost her dream of building a family with her boyfriend. She gets 'liberated' by Ryan's and Alex's ’post-family post-feminist’ inspirational world-view and promptly enjoys a fling with a stranger. Then there is Ryan's sister whose fiancé, Joe, who gets 'cold feet' just before marriage. Ryan, his derision for family ties not withstanding performs his brotherly duty to his orphaned sister by convincing Joe to take up family 'responsibilities'.
But yes, there is love, though only for a short while. Ryan and Alex have a few flings and eventually, Ryan inexorably falls in love with Alex only to realize in the most disappointing manner that Alex had kept it a secret from him that she had an unsuspecting husband and sweet kids and a suburban three story family home to call her own.
Aghast, Ryan needs an explanation from Alex. Alex does her best to explain to him that she never had any special feelings for him and that he was just her 'escape'. He was her escape from the mundane family life. Ryan's sister's fiancé gets cold feet before the wedding precisely because he is afraid of the ordinariness of family life. Once Natalie is liberated from the idea of having to start a family, she has no issues with having a one-night-stand with a stranger. Joe wants to 'escape' before the possibility of a family. Alex wants to 'escape' in spite of the family. Natalie makes good her escape once her dreams of family life were broken. Ryan lives 'Up in the Air' perpetually in the world of escape away from even considering a possibility of a family.
Family is eternal. Flings are ephemeral. Modern man appears to be willing to exchange one for the other because the heaviness of the eternal is unbearable for him.
When life lacks an overarching sense of purpose, as in the case of the characters in the film, the eternal aspects of life which involve costly commitment, begins to be seen as a burdensome ordinariness that needs to be abrogated and escaped from to be able to enjoy the ephemeral in life. What is lost on folks with this world-view is that within what they see as a problem - the 'family commitment', is present the essence of liberation from within the ordinariness of life. The costly commitment in reality, though is burdensome, serves as the means and the medium for fulfilling the 'relational purpose' of life.
Building a family is like being tree. The tree is eternal, but it appears unexciting. If an eternal tree, that lives for centuries, does not know what its purpose is as a tree is, it does not understand why it is ordinarily rooted in the ground, when other ephemeral birds can freely fly about ‘up in the air’. Such a tree will look at its rootedness to the ground as a burden and will want to be liberated it and be ‘up in the air’, unaware of the decadence it is embracing.
When life lacks an overarching sense of purpose, as in the case of the characters in the film, the eternal aspects of life which involve costly commitment, begins to be seen as a burdensome ordinariness that needs to be abrogated and escaped from to be able to enjoy the ephemeral in life. What is lost on folks with this world-view is that within what they see as a problem - the 'family commitment', is present the essence of liberation from within the ordinariness of life. The costly commitment in reality, though is burdensome, serves as the means and the medium for fulfilling the 'relational purpose' of life.
Building a family is like being tree. The tree is eternal, but it appears unexciting. If an eternal tree, that lives for centuries, does not know what its purpose is as a tree is, it does not understand why it is ordinarily rooted in the ground, when other ephemeral birds can freely fly about ‘up in the air’. Such a tree will look at its rootedness to the ground as a burden and will want to be liberated it and be ‘up in the air’, unaware of the decadence it is embracing.
The escape of the tree rooted on the ground to become a bird up in the air is an act of being liberated, but it is also an act of embracing an empty oblivion which gnaws at very essence of man’s being. Deep within, man yearns for the eternal, not for the ephemeral. Man cannot live with his feet planted up in the air, he had a deep need for his feel to be grounded somewhere deep and strong.