Well, Up In The Air aged perfectly

Ask me how I know.

I vividly remember watching Up in the Air in theatres. It instantly became a Top Three George Clooney performance for me, and kick-started my love for Anna Kendrick’s weirdo mode. (She makes zero sense to me playing someone who’s too cool for a cappella, let alone too cool for watching movies! Zero!) It also carefully and methodically tore my heart out of my body, right there in that Chinatown movie theatre. Clooney’s committedly aloof Ryan slowly realizing the folly of his solitude, and the harm he’s caused his family with his absence, hit really close to home.

His disdain for people who check bags also hit close to home. Y’all need to get better at packing!

But the thing that had me open-mouth sobbing in front of all those strangers and my poor friend Simone was the layoffs. Ryan and Kendrick’s Natalie are traveling the country as corporate mercenaries, firing people on behalf of the companies that don’t want to do the firing themselves. And, mind you, this is 2009/2010, so the firing business is booming. By the time the two got to Detroit, which Ryan warns has “been getting hammered,” I was inconsolable. “All of those people are real,” I kept wailing after the credits rolled. “All of these jobs are really gone.” The movie features a number of interviews with non-actors—aka real people—who had just lost their jobs in the Recession, which only drove the point home further. At the time, in my first year working a full-time job, the pain of losing one’s job felt unimaginable in its magnitude.

Well, as of two weeks ago, I don’t have to imagine the pain anymore. As is happening across the country right now, I lost my job. And, as happened to one poor soul in Up in the Air, it happened over Zoom. So I come back to this movie now at the turn of the tide.

For reasons that I feel should be obvious (the reasons are my feelings), the rest of this essay is paywalled. But I’m currently offering a discount on paid subscriptions! And if you’re not feeling a paid subscription at this time, I totally feel you. If you’d like to, you can get me a cup of tea, the fuel for my writing!