First of all, "Up In The Air", the third feature film by Jason Reitman (the second as a writer) is the best film premiered this year in Portugal. Yes, I know that does not mean much, in the year will start, but I am sure that, eleven months from now, this statement will not be further from the truth. With "Thank You For Smoking" and "Juno," Reitman has proved an excellent storyteller simple, realistic and full of substance. At a time when the shape overlaps the content in favor of a better ticket, "Up In The Air" is a film facing the inside, for the individual and their relationship with others and their place in society. not implicitly, but in the entire film revolves around this. And that alone is not little.
Ryan Bingham (Clooney) is a man who travels the United States to lay off employees that employers do not have the courage to say goodbye and give lectures on what we complicate life: our dependence on people and things. Airports and airplanes are his house, and this reality is necessary for their comfort and emotional independence and its maximum is to stop dying. Meet Alex (Vera Farmiga), a sexy, mature and independent woman who has a relationship comfortably dependent on work commitments and schedules and flight times. When your boss hires Natalie (Anna Kendrick) to optimize the company, implementing a system of redundancy for video conferencing that will make your travels useless, Ryan takes Natalie on a last trip to prove to them they are wrong and try to keep your way of life.
Although not always perfect (in the end it gets a bit corny), "In the Clouds" is an honest and absorbing story that grabs the viewer by the simplicity of the approach to the characters and the way it forces an identification with the protagonist (which from the beginning tells us in voiceover, their motivations and attitudes). This is the strength of the film, as it was in the previous: The main characters are human: they err, are selfish, egocentric and ... adorable. And this duality is what holds the spectator to the unfolding of the plot, make them care.
Of course, for this identification, the cast is very important. Clooney is brilliant in the apparent restraint and emotional equanimity, which may collapse at any time. Farmiga is blameless in the sensuality and false-will you put on your character. Kendricks is a vulnerable young woman who tries in vain to project the image that is strong. The rest of the cast stand out Jason Bateman, Ryan's boss, JK Simmons and Zach Galifianakis as two of the desperate fired. But one of the weaknesses of the film is all the rest of the cast. Especially in sequences where several people are fired sequentially, most reactions to sound false and there is cut a little of the viewer's relationship to the story. In a film as simple and realistic, it is an accidental and harmful calling attention to the theatricality.
Overall, "Up In The Air" is a very well structured film (the script follows all the rules without becoming banal academic or boring), with excellent photography, soundtrack and assembly. Performing Reitman helps to strengthen their place in the industry as a competent author, who despite his gaze focused on the lives of us all, does so sober elegant and elaborately simple. Your scholarship (in the right direction and not in what is commonly attributed to Ron Howard, for example) is close to the viewer, especially one who has recently distanced from the film. If the future of cinema passes for "Avatar," is also compulsory for "In the Clouds," a film that has his feet firmly on the ground.
Rating: 4 / 5
