Up in the Maguire

Up in the Air has the potential to be a great film. Its story reaches across demographics. It is as much as film for young upstart college graduates who are frustrated by their jobs as Associates at McKinsey as it is one for the middle-aged, those who have jobs and those who don't. 


It is a film about compromise, the way that age forces us to renegotiate our plans, and how our plans must be renegotiated to make sense in the world that we experience. Sometimes, Up in the Air shows this compromise to be one of finally acknowledging our dreams and going after them. Other times, the compromise means letting go of one's dreams in order to one day attain them.


But Up in the Air is ultimately a vaguely existential film, and has no intention of providing an out for our protagonist, played by George Clooney. Once so satisfied by his career-centric existence, he yearns for connection, and is offered it and then it is taken away. He is condemned to the life that he no longer wants, because he has worked at it for so long.


Up in the Air is best viewed as a companion of sorts to Jerry Maguire. In that film, Tom Cruise plays an agent who has a crisis of conscience and decides he wants a new kind of life. With the help of a man who wants to be shown the money and a woman with an adorable son, he is able flow into one.


Why Jason Reitman, director of Up in the Air, refuses to allow his protagonist to make a new life is unknown, but it drains Up in the Air of its immense potential to deliver the type of emotional experience that all great movies afford their viewers.


Related: New York Times Film Critic A.O. Scott revisits Jerry Maguire