"Up in the Air," Jason Reitman's film about "Transition Specialist," Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney), portrays the harsh realities of a hemorrhaging economy. The movie starts with Bingham explaining that he spent 322 days on the road last year and "43 miserable days at home."

SPOILER ALERT (Proceed with caution if you have not already seen the movie)...

As he touches down in one gray and slushy Middle American city after another, he makes fast work of firing scores of employees he has never met and will never see again, delivering the news with canned, emotionally detached speeches about new beginnings and transition. "There is a methodology to what I do. There is a reason why it works. What we do here is brutal and it does leave people devastated, but there is a dignity to how I do it."

Bingham embodies detachment, firing people with such precision that no human reaction sets him off course. He interacts with people who are at their most vulnerable with a sterile affect, never flinching, never stopping. “We are here to make limbo tolerable,” he says of his work, and, in that way, he is very good at what he does. His plans and reassurance are packaged such that there is only room to do as he instructs. Bingham controls the interactions with such skill, that even employees who react hysterically or with rage, still pick up the packet he provides as they enter the unknown, insecure world of unemployment.

Bingham's self discovery in the movie is about the ramifications of living such a detached life. As the film begins, he checks into hotel rooms, rental car agencies and flights with automated swiftness and relishes the false hospitality and tidy predictability of life in the air. However, as the movie continues he begins to realize that the things he values are as shallow and unimportant as the warm cookies provided in first class. At a motivational speech in another dim hotel, Bingham says, “The slower we move, the faster we die,” a truth that unravels as his job starts to change and he has to face the fact that the hard and fast rules he lives by - the rules of his profession and the rules of the air - do not make for a meaningful, stable life and might not be what he wants. He has constructed his life so void of substance that when he finally realizes that his family are strangers, his lovers are flings and his most cherished goal of reaching 10 million frequent flier miles is hollow, there's nowhere to turn.

The alienation in Bingham's life mirrors the alienation in the countless corporate offices he visits. After finally achieving his life’s goal, reaching 10 million miles and having his loyalty to the airline recognized by the pilot, he realizes that this particular type of loyalty isn't important to him anymore. The people he fires also have their ideas about loyalty and meaning shattered as as Bingham informs them that the companies that they saw as their family and relied upon for economic security, brutally cut them off. Throughout the movie, viewers watch several montages of workers (many of whom are real victims of corporate downsizing themselves, from St. Louis and Detroit) reacting to being fired. Most of these workers express disbelief at what’s happening; "...this is what I get in return for 30 years of service to my company?" They've given so much, they can't believe this is what they get in return. In these montages, many workers talk about how the company is like their family, and lament that they don’t know what to do with themselves if that family is taken away from them. One worker says, "on a stress level, I've heard that losing your job is like having a death in the family. But, personally, I feel more like the people I work with are my family and I died." Employees’ cold realizations, that they have spent their lives being loyal to a corporation that would never return the sentiment, is a profound paradigm shift.

Fear was another primary theme in the movie. When Bingham is pulled off the road to attend a company meeting, his neatly constructed life starts to fall apart. Recent college grad Natalie Keener (played by Anna Kendrick), has been given free reign to re-structure Bingham and his co-workers’ job. She presents a plan to pull the Transition Specialists off the road and do all firing via video conferencing from the Omaha office. When Bingham complains about this to his boss, he asks Bingham if he wants to be on or off the boat, whether he is willing and able to keep up with the changing times. As an older worker, and one deeply committed to the “old school” approach that has him firing people in person every day, this questions hits Bingham hard. He asks his boss, "Am I the only one that sees that by doing this we're making ourselves
irrelevant?" And his boss replies, "No, we're making you irrelevant." In that scene, we see the fear and panic of the countless faces he has fired over the years, on Bingham's face.

By the end of the movie, Bingham is able to convince his boss that the old way of doing things - firing people in person - is better than the automated version. But this does not reflect the reality of contemporary American workplaces. Workers are rarely able to stop the tide of automation, speed-ups and other “efficiency measures” that are imposed on them. A much more realistic portrayal of the modern workplace is the scene in the movie in which Bingham and Keener fire their first worker via video conference. The 57 year old shirtsleeve-clad Mr. Samuels sits down in the empty room, stares into the computer screen and curses, "what the fuck is this?" As Keener delivers a canned speech about new beginnings and possibilities, the man's outrage at being fired over the computer by someone who looks like a fourth grader, melts into despair. Keener is paralyzed when the man starts sobbing and won't respond to her repeated statement, "that's all we can discuss now, Mr. Samuels."

Throughout the movie, fear was palpable; it was noticeable in all of the workplaces Bingham and Keener entered. The employees all knew what the presence of these “transition specialists” meant. The movie offered no information about what kinds of businesses Bingham and Keener were contracted out to. The movie didn’t differentiate among banks, manufacturing, real estate or other business, but it didn’t matter. There was a universality to the moment when the employee was seated before Bingham and Keener; in that moment when someone was being fired, there was no humanity, no identity, only a script.

A key part of Bingham’s message to people being fired, was “you’ve been pushing paper for 30 years and you can do better.” This was one of the most interesting parts of the movie. In a way, it’s what everyone wants to believe. It’s the paradox of the American dream that most people crave meaningful work and entrepreneurial opportunities, but few ever get them. In one scene, the man being fired was earning $90,000 a year, and during the meeting with Bingham and Keener he became increasingly agitated about how he was going to find another job that paid as much. Bingham tries to convince him that while he was making $90,000, he was earning it doing something he doesn’t love. Bingham encourages him to go after his dream, becoming a chef, because he had culinary training and loved to cook. "I see guys who work out at the same company for their entire lives. Guys exactly like you. Clock in, clock out, they never have a moment of happiness. You have an opportunity. This is a rebirth." But the reality is that most people who are fired in the movie, and in real life, aren’t going to find a better paying job, or a new career that they love. If this employee went into food service, he might make $25,000 a year, working 80 hours a week. By the end of the scene, though, the laid-off worker was buying into the idea that you can be what you want and do what you want and shape yourself to that image. But the harsh reality is that he needed that job that he hated in order to support his kids and his lifestyle.

Up in the Air is a great movie; it’s provocative, depressing, funny and timely. It explores important themes in the lives of American workers; alienation, loyalty and fear. It provides a largely unsentimental window into the ruthlessness of corporate culture, especially the human tool of efforts to make work, and workers, more efficient, more productive, and cheaper. Everyone interested in work, workers and the American economy, should see this movie.