No fools

One of the main contenders for the "Golden Globe" and "Oscar" film "Up in the Air" with George Clooney is a smart film about today in the best European traditions

The young director Jason Reitman is not the first time making a movie about a pleasant person who is busy with some kind of filth and sincerely loves this business. The hero of the film "Smoking Here" advertised cigarettes, knowing full well that smoking kills. In the film Juno, the pregnant heroine was rather cynically looking for a mother for her unborn child. Now, in the movie “Up in the Air,” the sweetest top manager Ryan Bingham, in the guise of George Clooney, flies around America like a fighter angel and fires people. He has such a job - he is hired by the heads of various companies, so as not to get dirty themselves and say: "You are fired."

Ryan spends 300+ days of the year flying, at the airport or in hotels, and he loves it. He doesn't look like the glamorous office maniacs of the '90s (as in American Psycho) or the sitcom workers of the 00s (as in The Office). He is the ideal office hero of the post-crisis times, he has reached a certain status, always travels light, business class, but, unfortunately, is no longer young enough to enjoy the changes. He is basically a killer, but prides himself on not shooting in the back. He is a mercenary who does the dirty work so that there are no corpses left. He is reminiscent of Bruce Willis from Die Hard 4, who was compared to a mechanical watch in the computerized age. Clooney's character is also old-fashioned: he prefers to fire people personally, looking them in the eye, while his firm thinks to try more progressive methods of work. Fired in video chat over the Internet will save a lot of money and time.

Ryan's personal life takes place in hotel rooms, with women, the best of whom say: "Consider that I am you, only with a vagina." The family does not remember him for a long time. His hobbies are counting bonus flying miles and lecturing on how to get rid of attachments. In the end, he gets exactly what he wants: freedom from personal obligations and the status of the most honorary client of the airline, and this becomes an absolute loss for him. The most cherished desire came true, but there is no happiness, and now it is not clear what to do next.

American critics say it's a far scarier disaster film than Roland Emmerich's 2012. A film about the loneliness of a corporate long-distance runner. The film, like everything Reitman does, is about cynicism as a way of life. And about how cynicism distracts from real life. This is some kind of unusual type of comedy, Hollywood has long forgotten about this - a quiet movie about adult normal people. No 40-year-old virgins, stoners on the run, Kazakh homophobes, Israeli hairdressers and bad luck soldiers. Reitman returns to the tradition of smart dialogue from Billy Wilder and Woody Allen, rather than the farcical rampage of the Marx Brothers. He departs not only from farce and clowning, but also from the usual plot schemes and characters.

Reitman's "Juno" seemed to fit in with the current "let's talk about teenagers" trend. But no, the director is not interested in the teenage type of behavior, on the contrary, even teenagers behave like normal adults.

Perhaps the fashion for infantile heroes, like the jerks from the comedies of Jud Apatow, was a reaction to the "fat" years - when there are no other worries, it remains to think about ways to lose your virginity. Today, the most sought-after comedy hero is a normal person - let him make mistakes, let him behave stupidly, but these are adult stupidities. The viewer laughs not because the hero finds himself in an idiotic situation, he is confused with someone, or he falls from somewhere with a roar. The favorite American proverb “we are not laughing at you, we are laughing with you” unexpectedly begins to work in the film “Up in the Air”: you don’t want to laugh at Clooney’s hero, he doesn’t exaggerate anything, he has a sense of humor, like his chosen ones. And—a rare, long-forgotten pleasure—neither the characters nor the audience seem like idiots. It's captivating.

Films with this attitude - "cute audience cinema" - are often shown at the American Sundance Independent Film Festival, after which some of them even win an Oscar. Usually for the script, occasionally for some minor role. Recent similar comedies include Alexander Payne's Sideways or the Sundance hit Little Miss Sunshine by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Reitman went a little further: he made more than just independent films that don't follow standard Hollywood rules. He, in the best European traditions, made a smart film about today.

This is a drama that pretends to be a romantic comedy, like an office worker pretending that he is doing well, even if he is on the verge of divorce and being fired at the same time. This is a comedy that pretends to be a social statement, like an office worker discussing political news in a smoking room - solely for the sake of the appearance of communicating with colleagues.

In the movie "Up in the Sky" there are accurate observations - for example, that a modern man who does not want responsibility is most likely a bachelor, and a modern woman with the same attitude to life is most likely married. Because a modern man does not want to be responsible for someone, and a modern woman, no matter what she says, does not want to be responsible for her own life. But first of all, this film is a social statement about times of crisis. To keep the film fair, Reitman cast non-professional actors in bit parts - people from Detroit and St. Louis who actually lost their jobs during the economic crisis. He asked them to speak to the camera as if it were the person who fired them, and tell the camera what they thought. It turned out to be a kind of video accusation, all the more frank because sometimes a sympathetic George Clooney appears in the frame.

It is not surprising that the Americans, when asked if they watched the film "Up in the Sky", answer: "I live it." This is a very American movie. In Russia, no one will be so killed for flying miles, few will be happy about the prospect of flying from Saratov to Novosibirsk all year round, even if it is business class. And if you were fired over the phone - it's even convenient, and it's not a humiliation. That's when they don't pay severance pay - yes, it's humiliating.

Therefore, the unconditional American hit “Up in the Sky” will be perceived in Russia as an amusing film about George Clooney, his high status and orderly personal life. Or as proof that the most sought-after movie product in Hollywood today is sincerity and disregard for standard cinematic rules.

Forget about the needs of the target audience. Hollywood finals stopped working. In the same "2012" by Emmerich, humanity, as usual, survived in a global catastrophe, but the film became one of the main disappointments of the year. In Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, all the laws of the genre are observed, but it's boring to watch. But the romantic comedy "500 Days of Summer" by Mark Webb was declared a masterpiece by critics - also because here the heroes, the guy and the girl, breaking the traditional rules of rom-coms, parted. Considered a war drama, The Hurt Locker by Katherine Bigelow isn't about the horrors of war or how good it is to have a soldier come home. The most important sci-fi films of the year were Neil Blomkamp's District 9, Duncan Jones' Moon 2112 and James Cameron's Avatar - that is, films that claim that the truth is not on the side of earthlings, but on the side of alien shrimp, clones or new age blues.

Films that rethink the genre have become relevant. Like science fiction, like a romantic comedy, like a military drama. So "I would be in the sky" - like a comedy. Like a social statement. No matter how he won an Oscar.