Up In the Air (2009)

Walter Kern, author of the novel Up in The Air described his inspiration for the unusual book in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air. “I was flying and received a rare upgrade to first class and began a conversation with a businessman. I asked him where he was from and he answered quizzically, “I am from here”. Kern found himself fascinated by the prospect of trying to picture the life of a man who flies 322 days and up to 350,000 miles a year. The result of Kern’s musings was the 2006 novel, which also struck the fascination of father and son movie team Ivan and Jason Reitman. Jason, the younger Reitman, was the director of Juno, the surprise indie hit of 2007. He took the novel and ran with it. No doubt he ran directly toward the Hollywood establishment, but his fresh and quirky sensibility enlivens the film as it had Juno.

Ryan Bingham played by George Clooney, has his flying routine down pat. He travels light and with maximum efficiency. His metaphorical backpack is never burdened with unnecessary material objects or emotional baggage. He does not get attached. His smug smile is sincere and endearing, he knows exactly who he is and likes himself just fine. He desires neither entangling relationships nor family, and his only goal besides material success is some magical number of flying miles he is unwilling to reveal. Oh yes, his job is to fly from city to city, company to company, to tell people they have been fired-in the most impersonal, legal, and professional terms possible. He is very good at it. You could call him a model hatchet man in the era of the Great Recession.

Few could make such a man likeable but George Clooney as Bingham seems to carry the burden of his job with such ease and charm, he succeeds. When he meets Alex Goran, played by Vera Farmiga, an attractive, mature female frequent flyer in a hotel bar, the banter is so quick and witty it could pass for foreplay. They are both so good at this type of encounter its climax is a forgone conclusion. A scene where they sit across from one another, laptop to laptop, fingers flying to book the next tryst into their busy schedules, and finish in a dead heat is an instant classic. Only the unpredictable can disturb the smooth superficiality of the life-style, and of course it happens.

The satirical elements of the movie are obvious but its redeeming merit to me was the scenes of interaction between the hitman and the freshly fired. The reactions of everyday people who have devoted their years and careers to their company only to meet this sudden end puts a human face on the human toll of economic downturns. This pathos is uncomfortably real and makes the movie an entertaining reflection of its times.





Up in the Air: Directed by Jason Reitman. Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner. Starring George Clooney, Jason Bateman, Vera Farmiga, Karen Keener.

The Cold War Era: The Beginning

WWII proved to be the most devastating and disastrous war in human history. The military casualties were high, but there were a staggering number of civilian casualties. By 1943, Nazi Germany had 300 concentration camps and the Germans had begun the process of mass extermination known as the “final solution”. The Holocaust took over twelve million lives. The vast majority of these were innocent civilians who committed such crimes as being Jewish, Gypsy, disabled, mentally or physically ill, a political dissident, a religious protester or just an undesirable. Jews made up half of the total and were almost eliminated from the European population. Poland, for instance saw a Jewish population of 2.7 million Jews before the war reduced to less than sixty thousand. Victims were men, women, and children who were first herded into ghettoes and then systematically shipped by railroads to the numerous death camps. The toll was not known until the end of the war when the camps were liberated. All this happened in a country whose military had the highest literacy rate in the world.

Americans were shocked by the horrors of the war and eager to put it behind them as the war ended in 1945. When news of what the death camp liberators found became public knowledge, Americans felt justified for their participation in the “good war”. However, no sooner was the war over than a new chill spread over American society in the form of the “Cold War”. The Cold War was an ideological rivalry that pitted the US and its allies against the USSR or Soviet Union. The unique facet of this war was the reality of nuclear weapons. The atomic bomb had ended WWII and became the most decisive weapon in the Cold War, although it was never used again after Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The Russians developed and tested their own bomb in 1949, the same year that Mao Tse Tung’s communist army finally succeeded in ending China’s long civil war victoriously. At this point, two thirds of the world’s population lived under communism. Many Americans believed they had much to fear, and that fear became a large part of the Cold War era.

The turn around that US foreign policy made after WWII from the previous war could not have been more dramatic. It was highlighted by a speech made by President Harry Truman in 1947 to a joint session of congress asking for 400 million dollars for military aid to Greece and Turkey. In it, Truman pledged to support nations whose liberty was threatened by totalitarian aggression for the sake of “free peoples anywhere in the world”. The speech became known as the Truman Doctrine. Combined with George Kennan’s Containment policy, the belief that communism would spread if not systematically met and contained, it validated a series of interventions and covert operations to destabilize communist countries and left-leaning governments around the world for the next 40 years. The controversial Marshall Plan for financial aid to Europe was intended to thwart communism which was thought to spread wherever material deprivation and social injustice was prevalent. The plan proved successful as an economic recovery seeded by the $17 billion in aid revived businesses in Western European, which also led to profits at home for Americans. However, by that time the Soviet Union and the US and its western allies consolidated their power within their spheres of influence in Germany. Although a joint occupation of Berlin had been agreed upon, the city lay well within the Soviet zone. Russian leader Joseph Stalin blockaded the western entrance to Berlin. Truman responded by organizing a massive airlift of food and other supplies to sustain West Berliners. After a year of blockade and approaching the brink of war Stalin gave up the blockade. The Berlin Wall was built separating East and West Berlin and became a permanent fixture symbolizing the antagonism between the two superpowers and ideological enemies for the next 42 years.