The Hurt Locker

*****

Stuck in the Middle of War


          The Hurt Locker is the best film of 2009.  In fact, it is one of the best films I have seen all decade.  It is a visceral, succinct, and brutally stark depiction of the Iraq War.  It is also a timeless meditation on human conflict in general, and will without a doubt endure the erosion of time’s rust.  The most fascinating aspect of The Hurt Locker however, is the fact that it works individually as both a pro-war and anti-war movie, while functioning as neither.  It opens with a quote from American journalist and war correspondent Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”  Thankfully, The Hurt Locker is as equally addictive in its potency as a film.

          Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Strange Days), The Hurt Locker tells the fictional story of an American bomb squad unit and its missions to defuse bombs in the streets of Baghdad in 2004.  Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal (In the Valley of Elah) strip down all unnecessary war movie clichés, and allow the movie to speak for itself.  With its seamless fusion of directing, acting, cinematography, and sound design, The Hurt Locker is as unbearably intense and realistic a war movie that ever was.  It is a technical tour-de-force with honest performances and an insightful script, and, like every great film, leaves you wanting more.

          The film’s lead role as the bomb squad unit’s team leader, SSgt. William James, is played by Jeremy Renner (28 Weeks Later, North Country).  Given the somewhat reckless sense of abandonment in which SSgt. James approaches the field of battle, one could easily scrutinize him as being the typical All-American cowboy.  Give credit to Mark Boal and his subtle script however, since the character of SSgt. James is written with far more depth and complexity than would any mere stereotypical redneck.  That being said, much of the credit in constructing James as something more than a mere ‘adrenaline junkie’ is due to Renner’s breakthrough performance.  The first few scenes involving SSgt. James give one the impression that he is too heroic for his own good.  But with great patience and a strong understanding for his character, Renner slowly reveals the subtle nuances of a more three-dimensional-like James.  It is a more difficult performance than meets the eye and one which will surely catapult Renner to movie stardom.

          If there is any justice in the Academy Awards, then Kathryn Bigelow will become the first woman in its history to win Best Director.  Her work in The Hurt Locker is nothing short of visionary.  The title of the movie can be perceived as a philosophical reflection on humanity’s perpetual state of war, and throughout every scene of the film Bigelow’s camera acts a visual testament to such contemplations.  Thanks to Bigelow’s direction, The Hurt Locker is a perfect marriage of style and substance.  Her framing, camera movement, and scope help reflect the film’s perception of war as being both an endless drug and an inevitably in the journey of life.  There are some important scenes in the movie that resolve unanswered questions central to the film’s plot.  Unlike many directors working today, Bigelow trusts her audience to digest her visuals, and from them, piece together the answers to the film’s uncertain questions.  Instead of verbally explaining such questions, her decision to resolve them visually makes their realization all the more powerful.  It is a classic example of cinema’s unique aesthetic as an art form.

          The cinematography and editing in The Hurt Locker are both first-class.  Given the relentless tension of the film’s subject matter, these two facets of filmmaking had to be shipshape.  Thanks to the film’s consistently kinetic camerawork, its storyline unfolds like a two-hour session of Russian roulette.  The tension is almost unbearable at times, but it never serves as mere action-like fodder.  Through cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s dizzying camerawork and austere lighting, the film’s relentless tension mirrors its own thematic concept of war’s endless magnetism and dominion over the human race.  The masterful editing of Chris Innis and Bob Murawski help to connect Ackroyd’s endless stream of images in such a seemingly effortless manner, that the end result becomes that of a visual depiction of a shattered plane of glass that has yet to fall apart.  On its own merit, the editing is a beautiful work of art.  It perfectly brings together Bigelow’s conception of the permanence of war.

          There is no doubt about it: war is hell.  Whether it is a war between nations or tribes of people, or an individual’s own inner battle between the forces of good and evil, war will only beget more war.  Given the undeniable truth of such facts, The Hurt Locker’s portrayal of Chris Hedge’s insightful words (“war is a drug”) seems all the more formidable and realistic.  No matter which way one decides to perceive the philosophical, political, and spiritual outlooks of The Hurt Locker, there remains one underlining message throughout: in order for us to truly live as human beings, we must first learn how to live through war.  Whether it is through outer or inner wars, the result is the same: the battle continues...







 

A Single Man

** ½ 


A Moment of Pretense

        
          Colin Firth has been acting in films and television for nearly 30 years.  Like many actors before him, Firth has had to endure an unreasonable legacy of typecasting.  He has made his career out of playing a young, suave, handsome Brit, and whether he personified good or evil, it mattered not: his role remained the same. With his latest performance in A Single Man, however, all of his earlier potential has finally burst wide open.  It is all the more a shame then that his breakthrough performance had to come through the pretentious mess that is A Single Man.

          Directed through the longwinded vision of fashion icon Tom Ford, A Single Man is an ostentatious string of visuals, with a screenplay thrown in the mix.  Tom Ford is a famous American fashion designer, and A Single Man is his directorial debut in film.  It is an ambitious debut, and a deeply personal film at that.  Thanks to Ford’s extensive background in fashion design (and photography), A Single Man runs rampant with visual flair and expressionistic tones.  If this film had been made as sheer avant-garde, it might very well have been a masterpiece.  However, Ford made a haphazard attempt to balance his unique visual style with that of a lazy semblance of script and plot.  Simply put, his attempt fell flat.

          Aside from of all of his pompous close-ups and jarring editing, Ford (in collaboration with first-time screenwriter David Scearce) decided to adapt Christopher Isherwood’s 2001 novel A Single Man.  The film’s story centers on the character of George (Colin Firth) and his inability to cope with the accidental death of his former lover Jim (Matthew Goode).  George is an English professor at a university in 1962 Los Angeles, and has no choice but to keep his closet homosexuality a secret.  Like many gay men of that time period, George kept the status quo by involving himself with a female lover.  This lover (Charley, played by Julianne Moore) was more like a best friend to George; in fact, besides Charley, George did not have many friends at all, if any.  Firth did the best he could with Ford’s meager script, and helped transform George’s tight-lipped loneliness into something more universal in its understanding of anguish.

        
          If it weren’t for the exquisite performance of Colin Firth, A Single Man would have been as lifeless as a coffin.  This is particularly unfortunate, since Ford was trying to illuminate the notion of living life in ‘the moment’.  In order to cinematically reflect this philosophical outlook, Ford used many gratuitous close-ups, and, with the help of his editor Joan Sobel, applied a disorienting style of editing.  The result ended up looking forced and over-the-top, and only served to alienate the audience from its desired message.  There is one scene in particular which best highlights the indulgence of Ford’s storytelling technique.  It takes place in a jam-packed parking lot, as George engages in a conversation with a stranger whom he had just recently met.  The topics of the conversation vary from the profound to the mundane in a matter of seconds, and seem wholly improbable as mere introduction banter.  The worst part of this scene, however, has nothing to do with the unrealistic dialogue, but more with its baseless use of background space.  For some reason (or better yet no reason), the two men spend the bulk of their conversation in front of a massive billboard of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  Oooooooooo...very symbolic!  Yes, Tom Ford, we understand: you are a very cultured man indeed.

          Once again, the saddest part of this movie lies in the fact that a truly wonderful performance was nearly lost in its cluttered spectacle.  Colin Firth helped as best he could, through bringing an emotional balance to the film’s cold intellectualism.  But in the end, even Firth’s unspoken words couldn’t trump the film’s vanity.  Firth’s performance is nothing short of poetic, and richly deserves an Oscar nomination.  Firth was, in every sense of the word, A Single Man.  Even when the film tailed off into overwrought sentimentality, Firth held his ground.  Instead of acting as the film’s emotional catharsis, the ending was laughable in its unwarranted sappiness.  If the movie had been more emotionally conscious leading up to its climax, then perhaps the ending might have been more powerful.  Instead, for much of the picture, Ford trapped his characters inside a model shoot-like box, when all they really wanted to do was live.    





     

Ingmar Bergman

The Unbearable Silence Of Violence


          In the final scene of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, a man falls down to his knees and cries out to God. The ground on which this man has fallen, is the very same ground on which his daughter was previously raped and murdered. In an accusatory manner, this middle-aged father derides God for being an idle witness not only to his daughter’s murder, but also to the resultant act of vengeance that he inflicted on her perpetrators. “You saw it. God, you saw it. You allowed it to happen. I don’t understand you. I don’t understand you.” These words not only act as the focal point of this man’s prayer (and of the movie itself), but also operate as a reflection of both Ingmar Bergman the filmmaker, and Ingmar Bergman the human being.


          “The fear, the anxiety, the shame. The humiliation. The rage...I want to agree; I want to confess; I want to be good; I want to pay for what I’ve done.” Although these words were written by Ingmar Bergman himself (from his autobiographical book Images), in direct correlation with his being an accused tax evader, they stand strong as a true reflection of Bergman’s exceptional honesty. Many filmmakers try to sugar-coat the tragic side of life, especially when it comes to the notion of death and the inevitable mortality we must all face. The cinema of Ingmar Bergman, on the other hand, makes certain that its audience never forgets this inescapable fact of life. In his book Images, Bergman wrote, at length, about his ‘monumental fear of death’, and the countless anxieties he had to endure as a result of this most foreboding feeling. There is hardly a single frame in any Bergman film that does not deal with this personal dread. The remainder of this essay will focus explicitly on two contrasting ways through which Bergman dealt cathartically with his own fears: his 1972 masterpiece Cries and Whispers, and his ‘swan song’ film Fanny & Alexander.

          “It’s but a tissue of lies. All of it.”  These are violent words, spoken within a scene of violent physicality. It is this precise balance of inner and external suffering that makes up the heart and soul of Cries and Whispers.   In Images, Bergman stated that the colour red was the definitive symbolic colour for representing the “interior of the soul”. Since the colour red is not only the colour of blood, but is also a symbolic colour for the emotions of the human heart, it becomes fitting that one can see it, in some form or another, throughout every single scene of Cries and Whispers. There is one scene in particular which brilliantly demonstrates this thin line between inner human battles and their consequential acts of external violence. Bergman tells the story of Cries and Whispers through an unconventional use of flashbacks, with one of these flashbacks depicting a brief scene between one of the film’s three sisters (Karin) and her husband.


          The two are seen sitting across a dining room table, as they eat their supper in near-total silence. Rarely do they even look each other directly in the eye, as Karin’s husband eats his meal in a most cold and methodical-like manner. Finally, Karin poses a simple question: “Do you want coffee or are we going to retire immediately?” Without looking at her, her husband replies: “I don’t want coffee. Thank you.” Before he has even finished saying his ‘thank you’, Karin has broken into pieces the glass of red wine she was holding in her hand. Her husband looks up at her and smirks ever so subtly, and without a word, promptly continues eating his dinner. After the meal is over, and her husband has left the table, Karin picks up one of the broken pieces of glass and repeats her mantra: “It’s but a tissue of lies. All of it.” The scene transfers to their bedroom quarters, as Karin holds this same broken piece of glass in her hands, and stares at it blankly. Altering her mantra ever so slightly but significantly, Karin elaborates: “It’s but a tissue of lies. It’s a monumental tissue of lies.” She then gets up and sits down on a nearby chair, and taking the piece of glass in her hand, begins to cut open her vaginal area. In any other movie from any other filmmaker, this would be misogynistic filmmaking at its worst. However, thanks to Bergman’s meticulous attention to his characters’ emotional scars throughout the full hour before this moment, it actually becomes an authentic statement on the sheer rawness so often found in human behaviour.

          
          This particular scene is not only important in formulating the cathartic climax of Karin’s suffering, but it also discloses Bergman’s self-exorcising, as he tries to weed out his own demons through the creative process of his brooding yet honest brand of filmmaking. In Cries and Whispers, Bergman introduces each of the main characters and their respective flashbacks through using half-lit/half-shadowed close-ups of their faces. It is Karin’s introductory close-up however, that is perhaps the most poignant and self-illuminating of all the others. Just like in the other close-ups, Karin is looking directly into the camera with half of her face seen in the light, and the other half covered in shadow. She looks nervous and distraught, and gives the impression that she is ready to explode at any given moment. All of a sudden, she opens her mouth through an intense gasp and begins to silently mutter a few gibberish words. As though giving the impression of needing a momentary sense of release, she then closes her mouth and eyes and the screen fills up entirely with the colour red. This single shot embodies the entire thematic core of Cries and Whispers, as well as a possible declaration from the heart of Ingmar Bergman, himself. Through this one gasp, it seems like Bergman was trying to visually express, and thus better understand, that which he never could fully realize: his own personal pain and suffering.

           Fanny & Alexander was made by Bergman as his swan song and he described the movie as being “the sum total of my life as a filmmaker.” Since Bergman made this film his most earnest acknowledgement of the triumphs and disappointments that he had experienced both as a filmmaker and a human being, many critics have described Fanny & Alexander as the movie in which Bergman finally found some peace with God. In short, the movie’s story is told through the eyes of two young children (Fanny and Alexander), as they weave in and out through life’s endless thread of ups and downs, joys and sorrows, births and deaths, and many other of life’s numerous cycles. Bergman had long established himself as a true master of film through making a career out of brooding, meditative, and utterly candid cinema. Through making Fanny & Alexander however, it seemed like all of Bergman’s ideas, beliefs, anxieties, and hopes were coming together in one giant ‘spinning wheel’ of a movie.

          
          At one point in the film, the children’s father becomes gravely ill and dies. Not long after their father’s passing, their mother (Emilie) decides to marry a priest (Edvard) and they all move out to the countryside where he lives. Moving in with a new parent is a difficult scenario for any young child to have to endure. However, it isn’t long after moving into Edvard’s home that Fanny and Alexander realize just how horrific a man their new father truly is. Not only is their stepfather an extremely rigid and strict man, but he is also verbally and physically abusive towards the children and their mother. If this movie was made in Hollywood, there would have been a great risk of stereotyping the priest’s persona. But through the visionary mind of Ingmar Berman, Edvard stands for something far greater than just mere stereotype. As has been the case with many practising Catholics, Bergman (who grew up in a family of devout Lutherans) had suffered a long-lasting battle with what has become known as ‘Catholic guilt’. If one were to approach the cinema of Ingmar Bergman from an emotional standpoint alone, one may feel this sense of Catholic guilt percolating right through the frames of Bergman’s camera. Thus, it almost seems as if the priest from Fanny & Alexander is a direct personification of Bergman’s own life experience with this profound spiritual guilt.


          In her review of the Criterion Collection’s Fanny & Alexander dvd release, film critic Katherine Monk headlined her article with a profound yet simple declaration: “Bergman makes right with God”. Granted, this declaration of sorts could be applied to many of Bergman’s other masterworks, yet what makes this statement especially applicable to Fanny & Alexander, is the way through which Bergman surrendered cathartically to his never-ending battle with guilt and anxiety. There is a scene towards the very end of the film in which (after Edvard’s ‘accidental’ death) Alexander believes he has seen the ghost of his abusive stepfather. The scene begins with Alexander eating a fruit biscuit in relative calm and serenity, as he walks down the hallway of his original childhood home. Suddenly, the camera reveals a cross dangling behind Alexander’s shoulder, which, we realize soon enough, is hanging from Edvard’s ceremonial cassock. Before the audience even has time to digest this frightening image, Alexander has been shoved to the floor. While still lying on the floor, Alexander raises his head and looks directly at Edvard. Edvard turns around and enlightens Alexander with a horrifying proclamation: “You can’t escape me.” Those four simple words, as terrifying and powerful as they were, ended up being the prescription for Ingmar Bergman’s greatest cinematic redemption. It is an epiphany that can only be revealed through experiencing a lifetime of portentous emotional suffering. Now that Alexander has come to a better understanding of Edvard’s inescapable presence, he will no longer need to resist the pain of his own abusive past.

          Bergman passed away on July 30th, 2007 at the age of 89 years old. He was labelled by Woody Allen as “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera”. It is all the more significant a tribute that these words would came from Woody Allen, since he is generally recognized as one of the greatest comedic directors American cinema has ever known. Upon closer reflection however, one may better understand how this paradox of filmmaking styles could lead to such towering words of admiration. On superficial levels alone, joy and laughter are two conditions that are bound to be short-lived. A more substantial state of happiness however, tends to arise from one’s ability to become more mindful and conscientious of life’s inevitable falls and disappointments. It is only through learning this life long lesson of embracing the numerous emotional scars of life, where one’s darkness can truly be reflected into a reality of light. If all of life’s real joy and laughter are rooted in this painful lesson, then the films of Ingmar Bergman are the funniest lectures one will ever attend. Bergman was a true master in the art of finding light in the darkest recesses of the human heart. Even if he had to suffer a lifetime of heartache in order for this to be realized, his suffering was not lived in vain. Through viewing the countless works of art he created onscreen, we can only send up a prayer of hope, that one day all of us will bask in the full summer light that Ingmar Bergman now calls home.

Daybreakers

***

Embrace The Distant Light Of The Sun


          Let’s face it: the ‘vampire film’ is a dying breed (yes that also includes the Twilight films).  It seems like all of the originality has been sucked dry from this allegorical genre, which makes it fitting then that Daybreakers would tell the story of the world in 2019 (only 9 years away!), as ruled by vampires who find themselves on the brink of extinction.  In this not-so-distant future world, human beings make up only 5 % of its population.  As such, the dwindling human blood supply is creating havoc on this newly immortal planet of vampires.  Hence, the ruling vampire government is forced to hunt down the remaining human population and store them in a massive vault, so that they may preserve their blood supply and eventually create an abundance of imitation human blood.  Yes, indeed, vampire movies can be rather silly.

          The legend of the vampire was never meant to be taken seriously on a literal level, but rather a metaphorical one.  This vampire/human allegory (beginning with Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula) has formed the shape of many different metaphors throughout human history.  Depending on the historical context of their times, many authors and filmmakers alike have created vampire stories which subtly - or not so subtly – mirrored the societies in which they lived.  The same can be said about the Spierig brothers film Daybreakers.  While keeping with the longstanding traditions of the vampire legend, the Spierig brothers (who also penned the script) have updated the genre to our narcissistic times of fierce consumerism and lackluster humanitarianism.  With our modern day society replete with online consumerism, social networking, and endless shopping malls, Daybreakers is a fitting testament to our own world of forgotten humanity.

          Sometimes it seems like our world is trying all the harder to forget (or neglect) the pains and tribulations of human existence.  We constantly trick ourselves into believing that the more we consume or the more we have, the easier it will be to forget our pain.  However, it is through these pain-driven gains that we continuously find ourselves revisiting the worst of our pasts.  In Daybreakers’ finer moments, this unrelenting reality acts as the driving force to its storytelling.

        
          In all vampire stories, the vampire is simply a reflection of our ugly side as human beings.  With Daybreakers, this ugly side becomes the fallibility of the human race to recognize and accept the reality of pain and destruction.  Daybreakers tells the story of a vampire named Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), a valued government worker helping the vampire cause of finding a cure for the human blood (or lack thereof) epidemic.  Unfortunately, for the vampires, Edward feels empathetic towards the remaining humans, and is thus wary of the government’s systematic approach in hunting down the minority human race.  It isn’t until Edward meets Lionel ‘Elvis’ Cormac (Willem Dafoe), a human who used to be a vampire, that he discovers the ultimate method for curing the extinction of his vampire race.

          The method is deceptively simple, but one which nonetheless poses an inevitable question:  Duh??!  Why did they not think of that before?  Everyone knows by now that vampires have only one weakness: the sunlight.  If they are in direct contact with sunlight, they will die within minutes.  Lionel’s back-story of how he became human again is surprisingly moving and poetic.  In a car accident, Lionel was ejected midair into the daylight, which, due to the open sunlight, caused his body to burst into flames.  Upon landing in a dark tunnel of a nearby creek, Lionel gets up and discovers that he has not only survived the accident, but has also become human again.  He then comes to realize that episodic exposure to direct sunlight can transform a vampire back into a human being.  This fantastical scene not only functions as a key plot twist, but eventually serves the movie as a philosophical motif for the human condition.

          Unfortunately, there are only a few such intriguing facets to the movie.  Otherwise, the film ends up getting bogged down in highly clichéd action sequences and equally corny dialogue.  Despite the film’s unevenness and awkward transitions, howver, it still manages to absorb its audience with moments of thoughtful introspection.  With its focal point centering on the evolutionary idea of ‘the survival of the fittest’, Daybreakers takes the traditional vampire metaphor and spins it back towards human decency.  Through employing the idea of the vampires’ intermittent exposure to daylight, the Spierig brothers have taken the ugly side of the vampire (human) psyche and have used it as a means for teaching a valuable lesson: the more we stay away from either the absence or presence of light the more immediate the burning of pain will be.

          Given the fact that Daybreakers relies too heavily on its central concept, it can hardly be called a groundbreaking vampire movie.  If it weren’t for this one sharp thematic twist or Willem Dafoe’s performance, Daybreakers would be tedious at best and laughable at worst.  Thankfully, Dafoe puts forth his gritty acting style and carries with him some of the best lines and scenes in the movie.  Standing next to him, however, is Ethan Hawke, who continues to look like a deer caught in headlights.  Despite the film’s flaws, it is a worthwhile movie-going experience.  It is deserving of one’s time if not for its slight resurrection of the vampire concept, then at least for its valiant effort in trying to make something artful out of something fundamentally ridiculous.  However, before seeing this or any other vampire movie, one should be prepared to embrace its distance from the ordinary, so that the extraordinary can be less painful to endure.    

Up in the Air

*****

Suspend Your Disbelief and Fly Back Down To Earth


          Sometimes we watch movies that transcend everyday life, and by so doing, are transported to a higher state of art.  Other times, we watch movies that are ‘slices of life’, and by so doing, are better equipped to handle life’s daily lessons.  Every now and then, however, we watch a movie that both transcends and affirms our everyday realities.  This rare occurrence has most recently come to pass with the release of Up in the Air.

Directed by the up-and-coming sensation that is Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking, Juno), Up in the Air gives us a timeless story, yet one which deftly mirrors the times in which we live.  The film opens with a sequence of various people being fired from their jobs.  Most of these people end up venting with some valid complaints, but it is the last person who sums it up the best: “Who the fuck are you?”  Immediately, we see a man, who then answers this question through voice-over narration: “Excellent question.  Who the fuck am I?”  We soon learn that this man works for a company, who in turn is hired by other companies to fire their own employees.  In short, this man (Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney) is a despicable character.

Movies have the unique, if somewhat frightening, ability of making unsavory characters likeable.  Whether this is a commendable feat or not, it is still a very impressive and mystifying accomplishment.  For the first half of Up in the Air, it is clearly evident that Ryan Bingham is not only an unscrupulous man, but one who represents all that is cold and detached in modern day society.  Yet somehow, he manages to come across as being charming, charismatic, and even likeable.  This trickery of sorts was successful thanks to George Clooney’s wonderfully subdued performance, as well as Jason Reitman’s outstanding screenplay (adapted by Walter Kirn’s novel of the same name), and taut direction.

Up in the Air is essentially a fantasy about contemporary society.  Since the financial crisis began in late 2007, millions of people have lost their jobs through cost-cutting and downsizing.  With Up in the Air, Reitman combines this real life situation with a slight stretch of human imagination.  I sincerely doubt (or hope) an employee such as Ryan Bingham actually exists in the real world.  However, given how cold our modern day communication has become, his character and job status are not too far off from where we may be headed.  There is a scene in the movie when an employee from a major company in Detroit actually gets fired (or rather ‘let go’, according to the ‘integrity’ of Bingham’s work) through a webcam on his computer.  Even worse than this however, is the location through which Bingham’s co-worker Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) is firing this poor man: the office next door.  Absurd? Absolutely.  Far-fetched?  Perhaps not.

It is this seamless combination of the fantastical and the real that makes Up in the Air a modern day masterpiece.  Reitman’s witty script allows for the movie to breathe on its own, yet at the same time propels the film into a constant sense of motion.  It is the sort of script that Bingham himself would approve of.  As though it were not enough for Bingham to make a living off firing people he has never met, he also gives motivational speeches (of the half-Tony Robbins-half isolationist kind) to help people learn the art of losing human connection.  Bingham’s backwards justification for living in such ‘a cocoon of self-banishment’ stems from his ‘bullshit philosophy’ on the human condition.  According to Bingham, “we must make no mistake about it…living is moving”.  Bingham sees human beings not as swans, but as sharks; the more we slow down, the quicker we are to die.  Fair enough, but instead of moving forward together as a unified species, Bingham feels that human nature was meant to develop more in the guise of a constant stream of individuals.  Reitman’s script incorporates two contrasting aspects that would bring dimples to Bingham’s boyish smile: a sense of confidence in taking time to develop, and a constant sense of motion.  Thankfully, Reitman goes a step further than his anti-hero, by adding a third aspect to his dichotomous thematic material: a balanced set of ideals and character traits.

As original a film that Up in the Air is, it would have been a dreadful bore had it not been for the three-dimensional writing of its two supporting characters.  Early on in the film, we are introduced to Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), who is quite easily (or willing to be) seduced by Bingham’s charms.  Through a chance meeting at a hotel bar, Alex and Ryan slowly develop a casual love affair with no strings attached.  Alex seems to have everything that Ryan looks for, in regards to relationships with women.  She’s smart, witty, beautiful, and best of all, comes with no rules.  She is the mirror image of Ryan himself.  In fact, at one point she instructs him to think of her as merely Ryan himself, "but with a vagina".  It would have been too easy and cheap for Reitman to write Alex’s character as merely the mirrored image of Ryan; as such, Reitman makes sure that there is more than meets the eye when it comes to Alex.  This three-dimensional quality of Alex’s character would not have been nearly as powerful, if it weren't for Vera Farmiga’s performance.  Farmiga’s portrayal of Alex is a classic lesson in the ‘less is more’ style of acting.  Farmiga is subtle, quiet, yet fiery when she needs to be.  She transforms Alex into a complex character of open-mindedness and compassion, yet not without her moments of vanity and deceit.  It is a terrific performance, and one which will surely give her an Oscar nomination in February.

The other major role is Natalie Keener, as played by Anna Kendrick.  For the most part, Natalie is everything that Ryan is not: idealistic, romantic, a believer in marriage and true love, etc.  However, in order to keep Natalie from becoming the mere antithesis to Ryan’s character, Reitman diversifies Natalie by instilling within her a variety of personal traits.  At times, Natalie can come across as being naïve and inexperienced, but she can also be tough, zealous, and fiercely independent.  She may be a dreamer, but in many ways she is far more realistic than Ryan when it comes to the art of human relationships.  This cross-section of human characteristics acts as an important counterpoint to Ryan’s stubbornness, and becomes essential to Ryan’s maturity as a human being.  Natalie is the only likeable main character in the movie, and in many ways, the most diverse.  Kendrick works through the motions of her character with seamless confidence.  She allows Natalie to be weak and human, while continuing to infuse her with hope.  Her character in many ways represents the core of the film’s message, and her performance will surely take your breath away.

In this day and age, it is easy to make a film that either negates or glosses over the realities of our troubled times.  At the same time, it is just as easy to make a film that overindulges itself with the struggles of our everyday lives.  Up in the Air manages to stay away from making either of these polarizing mistakes, and instead, creates a funny, bright, yet dark and dramatic mood piece.  It is a sublime masterpiece, and one which fits perfectly with our modern times.  It asks us all to stand up and keep the good fight going, while remaining diligent and realistic with all that must come to pass.  So go out and buy a ticket to see Up in the Air; you will soar down to earth like you’ve never soared before.