UP IN THE AIR

So I went to four of the Holiday movies. I still haven’t gone to AVATAR and, contrary to my promise, may not get around to it. I sort of buy the argument of Porcher Caleb that Christian and imperial conservatives have been overreacting to it. That’s not because pantheism in the sense of oneness with nature and selective tribal nostalgia are good according to Wendell Berry. It’s just that the reviewers have been working their way to the sensible conclusion that the film ain’t that deep. I’m sure it’s a fabulous techno-display in 3-D, but I don’t want to risk going blind.

I will get around to posting what I learned from of the movies. Here’s the first one. Don’t confuse the following with a review, which is above my pay grade.

UP IN THE AIR seems, at first, to exaggerate in one character the modern tendency to confuse virtuous or placeless, unencumbered life with real life to defend love, family, and all that from techno-capitalist tendencies to empty live of meaning. Baggage, we hear in a self-help presentation by that character (Clooney), is more trouble than it’s worth, but, chastened by love, he later corrects himself by saying to a relative balking at marriage that life without baggage—or at least a “co-pilot”—can’t be sustained, even if life, deep down, is pointless and we all die alone. A woman, of course, would never confuse virtual life with real life, although a clever and beautiful woman can enjoy both. Airports and Hiltons are horrible places that you wouldn’t want to spend much time in, but they’re pretty convenient if you only use them once in a while to get where you’re going. They aren’t meant, of course, to be homes. It’s ironic that corporations these days inspire our loyalty and sense of belonging by giving us miles and points and stuff, while at the same time employing experts that employ heartless techniques to fire those with decades of service. Who can deny that we live in a time when genuine personal loyalty is weaker than ever? BUT people who live more on the virtual side are prettier, smarter, and more fit and healthy than those stuck in places like small towns in northern Minnesota. And the Clooney character finds himself all alone at film’s end, and that’s sad. Still, ennobled by what he’s learned through his various experiences displayed in the film, nobody should believe—given how rich, handsome, smart, charming, and even sensitive he is—that he’s going to have to stay that way long. If he does decide (fat chance!) to return to northern Minnesota, the women will be swooning all over him. And another character shows us it’s pretty stupid for a brilliant businesswoman to uproot herself and take a job unworthy of her talents to be with a boy who said he loved her.

So the movie seems to be about balance, but surely in a way that doesn’t challenge its intended audience. It flatters the bourgeois bohemian pretension that it’s possible for people like me to have it all. So it’s the best reviewed film of the season and is destined to continue to be showered with awards.