Ryan Bingham has a really nasty job; he fires people for companies too cowardly to do it themselves. He likes his job mostly because he knows he’s good at it, but also because he loves to travel. He isn’t interested in anything that can’t be packed into his travelling case, including people. In any other movie, he would be a villain condemned to a sad and tragic end. But this isn’t any other movie. This is Up in the Air, directed by one of my favorite filmmakers Jason Reitman and stars George Clooney in a role tailor-fit to perfection.

Bingham’s world is compartmentalized and orderly, as neatly packed as his travel case. He doesn’t have a home, living out of hotel rooms around the country as he goes from job to job. With such a lousy economy, it’s frenzy feeding time and Bingham takes full advantage. But then his life hits a snag when two things happen. The first is that he meets Karen (Vera Farmiga), a fellow traveler whom attracts him with her simple sweetness and lack of wanting any resemblance of a relationship outside of stops here and there. The other is that his company has hired a recent graduate named Natalie (Anna Kendrick), who is designing interactive software that allows his company to fire people via webchat. Out of both righteous and selfish indignation, Ryan contests in one of the film’s best scenes as he shows how delicate it is to fire someone. He is right, but we also know his real intention is that he wants to stay on the road. He convinces his boss to take the rookie on a couple of trips and show her first-hand.

The film is ultimately a series of events that happen during these trips. We see the effect that comes with being laid off and you would have to be cold not to feel their anger, frustration and terror as they know exactly how difficult many of them will find it getting a new job. Peppered into many of these montages of the newly damned are non-actors who have been laid off themselves. The problem with non-actors is that while they might have been through a scene such as the one they are playing, they are also trying to act and therefore lose the effect. But there are some actors such as Zach Galifianakis and J.K. Simmons. But they are not the reason for the film. They are the backdrop. The real focus is Ryan, who is not cold, distant or hostile. He really is just trying to do a job that he’s good at and has perks that are for him the real reason he’s doing it. He is close to a personal goal which might seem meaningless and down-right cruel considering how he comes about getting it.

The great thing about Jason Reitman’s films is that he doesn’t judge his characters and never leads the audience to do it either. He is curious about these individuals who make choices that we ourselves  might think are bad, and shows them to be humans trying to get by and a life that is being lived long before we have met them and long after we depart their company. Rietman is a great filmmaker not because of his technical prowess or his use of shots, but in his ability to keep the humanity of his characters intact and never makes excuses for them. And while it would be easy to compare Bingham to the protagonist in Rietman’s Thank You For Smoking, a tobacco lobbyist, they are completely different animals playing for completely different reasons.

But what really allows the film to come through is the acting. George Clooney really does find his pace as Bingham and allows himself to play both the good and the bad of this rather distant character. But Clooney also knows to keep restraint and to allow the real flavor to come out in these colorful and exciting supporting characters such as Jason Bateman, Melanie Lynsky, Danny McBride, Amy Morton, Kendrick and Farmiga. But let’s really look at the last two ladies, who play such a large part in this film. Kendrick, whom I had last seen in the Twilight movies, is both a pleasure and a pain in the film. In some scenes, her awkwardness is refreshing and lovable. But other times she comes off as annoying and shrill, such as her really horrible crying scene in the middle half. But we are not supposed to be behind her as her freshness grates with unintended insensitivity at times, not to mention that she’s trying to take away the one thing that our protagonist wants the most; freedom.

The real prize of the film, and one of the best performances of the year is Vera Farmiga, who plays her role with a knowledge and humanity that will be needed when we really get to know her later in the film. We can see why Ryan would be affected by this woman and yet we also know why she would act the way she does. It’s usually an actors delight to be play a role that has more going on than meets the eye. Here, Farmiga has a role that allows her to really shine.

This is not a film of technical wonder or silent fury, but of curiousity and fascination of people not ourselves, made up of human beings neither righteous or foolhardy, but both at the same time. The film invites us to feel sadness but doesn’t revel in it like most films. It also invites us to laugh, but tempered with the knowledge of the horrible truth that the people Ryan meets are stuck in Purgatory and never lets us forget.  That is to the credit of Rietman and his co-writer Sheldon Turner’s screenplay.