There are new aspects to Clooney’s persona on display here. We see Clooney dancing, smiling, and joining in the lyrics of a rap performance (without the substance abuse needed by his character in The Men Who Stare at Goats). For some, the juxtaposition of an older couple (he and Alex) in among a group in their 20s might jar a little but their presence could also be seen as empowering. Rather than trying to be something they are not, Alex and Ryan are a mature couple, unwilling to give up youthful fun. They drop in and out of the hotel group, crashing the party in the hotel and on the boat but not participating in the karaoke. Like the character of Bob (Bill Murray) in Lost in Translation, a middle-aged man is shaken out of his routines, in part by partying with a crowd of people a generation younger than himself. Murray communicates a clearer sense of real joy (exacting a promise of a tape of some new music), but Clooney’s character here is neither being laughed at as out of place nor adopting a position of patronizing superiority. In both films, the embracing of human contact is seen as a healthy development for an individual who leads an isolated life of global travel. Also, by choosing to use MC Young playing himself as a rapper, with his best known 1989 hit “Bust a Move,” the position of Alex and Ryan are in a sense strengthened, as they are familiar with the song, an old-school classic (and can sing along).
What perhaps is most noticeable is the mature range in Clooney’s performance here. He can be the smiling, charming cad with Alex but also the brooding, empty face of loss, like on the subway, trying to understand what kind of a relationship he has or can ever have with her. His expectation of praise (in producing the photos for his sister or offering to walk her down the aisle) is converted in a moment into a suppressed sense of loss and disappointment. Natalie is the more obviously emotional character, with her feelings barely kept in check, but Clooney’s character has a more nuanced depth, which is often dismissed simply as charm. In scenes where he is alone on-screen, there is no need for such performance for a third party, and here he brings the somber and almost elegiac tone of Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2003) and Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007).
It is a film that deals with overtly philosophical issues, particularly around the need for and value of human connectivity. As Jim (Danny McBride) bluntly expresses it, when having last-minute doubts about marrying Ryan’s younger sister, Julie (Melanie Lynskey), “What is the point?” Reitman raises the notion of what is worth keeping in life, to what values and people should we be paying most attention. Linked to this is the notion of loyalty: most obviously in Ryan’s card, showing loyalty to a particular airline (as the airport posters remind us), but Ryan is forced to evaluate to whom or what should he be loyal. Surrounded by people in his working environment, Ryan is essentially alone, living out his backpack theory as well as selling it as a motivational speaker. However, like Miles Massey’s planned lecture on divorce in Intolerable Cruelty, the hero’s speaking engagement becomes impossible when the life of the speaker shows the flaws in the central idea.
Natalie’s use of the blend “Glocal” reflects the film’s tension between the macro and micro, between the big and small scale. Ryan’s job of laying people off ultimately leads to his own status as dispensable, and his dismissal of marriage as a concept contributes to Jim’s doubts; but then he must, in the style of a debate, argue against his own position in order to understand a contrary point of view (foreshadowed by Natalie’s attempt to sell Ryan the idea of marriage on the shuttle). The sacking of Bob, which Ryan takes over as Natalie’s strategy falters, includes lines about the process being a “wake-up call” and a “rebirth,” which also reflect his own development. He is forced to rethink his whole view of human nature and whether indeed we are like sharks (isolated, predatory, and essentially nomadic) or better suited by nature to the monogamous bonds represented by swans.
The breakdown of Natalie’s relationship and her subsequent outbreak of hysterics in an airport hotel lobby may seem a little out of place with the emotional tone of the film, but her brutal dumping by text reflects an emotional version of the work that she and Ryan are engaged in. However, she seems just a little too easily damaged for a 23-year-old here. The subsequent exchange between the three about expectations and coupledom includes some interesting and funny lines; but again, Natalie, expecting a child and a partner with a Grand Cherokee, sounds like someone much younger than her age might suggest. It feels as if the script almost wants to identify her as a teen, a clear generation apart from Alex and Ryan, at home with new technology, having a psychology degree, and full of naïve hopes about romance and marriage (“I followed a boy”). Natalie’s catalog of romantic hopes and dreams is juxtaposed with Alex’s briefer and more realistic checklist. Although not intended to destroy Natalie’s worldview, Natalie’s reaction is comic as she is not ready to give up on her dreams too quickly (“Wow, that was depressing”).
However, the film, via the reaction of Alex and Ryan, does not judge her harshly. In fact, the very opposite is true, as they take a parental and protective view of her. This makes Alex more likeable to audiences, who otherwise might have seen the two women as rivals, so that the advice Alex passes on to Natalie seems heartfelt rather than world-weary and cynical. Likewise, Ryan takes Natalie literally under his wing, giving her a hug in the middle of the lobby, supporting her in the journey to try out her new software, and even arguing on her behalf with his boss that she should be allowed to continue when a sacking by video conference turns messy, and giving her a supportive reference, helping her to get a new job.
Although we have a protagonist who lives in or around anonymous airports, who leads a life of little emotional connection, broken only by casual sex, this is not the world of J. G. Ballard. The film has a much warmer heartbeat. As Ryan eventually declares, “Life’s better with company.” The posed pictures that Ryan takes with the Amelie-style cutout (a request for Ryan to pick up some salmon in the novel) seem kitschy, but the truth is, although Ryan can afford to travel to exotic places, he goes no nearer to them than his sister does. Indeed, at times the film feels close to a Wes Anderson movie, particularly in the wedding section, where we are encouraged to laugh with, rather than at, the unpretentiousness of small-town weddings. Like Anderson, Reitman likes to work with particular actors in supporting roles (like Ryan’s boss, Craig, played by Jason Bateman) and key technical roles, like the use of design company Shadowplay for the opening credits. There is a similar inclusion of the quirky and small scale, the notion of a surrogate family, and most obviously, perhaps, the work of musical supervisor Randall Poster. Like Anderson, Reitman writes and directs and builds up a store of preferred music while he writes. There even feels like a small nod to Max in Rushmore (1998) in Jim sitting on a tiny chair, both representing individuals struggling to accept grown-up responsibilities. However, Clooney, who worked with Anderson on Fantastic Mr. Fox the same year as Up in the Air was released, is given more leeway to improvise by Reitman, such as the flirtatious scene with Alex about their attempts to join the Mile High Club.
Very few shots draw attention to themselves as self-conscious art. Technology and artistry are largely subordinated to the needs of the story. As Ryan’s life starts to come under more pressure, extras in the background were given instructions to move around more and dressed a little less smartly. Shots of chairs all piled together or rooms empty but for dozens of phones on the floor provide powerful images of an economy in decline, and time and energy are devoted to providing fake snow for the school scenes or Ryan’s appearance at Alex’s house, just to keep the sense of seasonal continuity. The extremely complicated but unobtrusive matching of eye lines in the scene between Natalie, Ryan, and Craig, where they play out fictional firing scenarios, creates a vibrant and dramatic scene and conveys the balance of power shifting from Natalie back to Ryan, who then ultimately scores a hollow victory by humiliating her.
The film dramatizes how unattainable the American Dream is for millions who may be laid off through no fault of their own, what priorities indi
viduals set for themselves, and how they decide that they are a success. By the close of the film, Ryan has achieved his aim of a specific number of air miles, has gained an exclusive card (only the seventh person to do so), and gets to meet the iconic pilot, Maynard Finch (Sam Elliott), whose mustachioed face we have seen on airport posters. Now however, Ryan literally has nothing to say as he realizes the insubstantial nature of that dream. When the captain expresses wonder at how he has found the time to do this, the waste of Ryan’s life spent denying the kind of human connections that he now comes to understand is driven home. However, Reitman refuses easy sentiment. Ryan arrives too late in the lives of his family to be welcomed unquestioningly with open arms. He cannot suddenly take the role of father of the bride, and his pictures occupy only one of many on the board. In his absence, his family has made other connections.
Reitman also refuses the easy ending of some kind of bond with one of the female leads, which might have made Clooney’s character less problematic to mainstream audiences but would have required a distortion of what we have learned about Alex and Natalie up to this point. This even extends to Ryan himself, after Alex describes him as merely “a parenthesis.” Her character has not fundamentally changed: she is still a strong, independent individual, using sex as a form of escapism, very much in the way historically men might have done. However, Ryan’s character has changed and such a compartmentalized life is no longer enough for him. The film explores the importance of a sense of home and belonging, and Ryan symbolically lets go of his luggage in slow motion; but in his weary close-up, looking up at the destination board, there is little sense he really knows where he is headed. As the title suggests, he is still literally up in the air, in a state of limbo. He is still a global citizen, and as his backpack philosophy states, all he can do is keep moving.
Reitman delivers a witty script that carries its subtext lightly (Kirn himself appears as a cameo next to Clooney in the meeting scene), at the same time giving Clooney the space and time to deliver one of his strongest acting performances. There is a blend of Clooney’s physical charms (we see his torso twice: first in the first seduction scene, using his concierge key, and later after the conference party), his self-deprecating wit (his sudden look in a mirror behind him on hearing Natalie describe him as old would not be out of place in his commercials), and a more cynical world-weariness (in the setup gag to Natalie in which he describes the “moment when you look into somebody’s eyes and you can feel them staring into your soul and the whole world goes quiet just for a second?” only to add that he does not feel that). However, Reitman allows Ryan only a handful of such flip comments, which would push the film more in the direction of romantic comedy and which, though raising a laugh at that precise moment, would feel like a cheap shot and erode sympathy for Ryan, especially when aimed at Natalie who believes in such romantic ideals.
Exact responsibility for precise parts of the script remains a little ambiguous. Reitman initially claimed sole credit but the Writer’s Guild of America awarded shared credit with Sheldon Turner, who wrote an earlier draft (apparently unknown to Reitman at the time). Reitman began work on the project before Thank You for Smoking (2005) and Juno (2007), initially conceiving the narrative as more of an overt comedy, but following the global financial crisis altered the tone significantly, giving some elements almost a documentary feel. Reitman persuaded his father, fellow director Ivan Reitman, to gain the rights to Kirn’s novel, and with his father as producer, Ted and Nicholas Griffin were commissioned to produce a script, which was then worked on further by Reitman (Jason).
It is the first time that Clooney’s name alone stands at the top of the billing, and along with The American (Anton Corbijn, 2010), it represents a further step in Clooney’s stature within the industry. He still makes (and possibly prefers) ensemble pieces, but he is now able to carry a film narrative that sits very much on his shoulders.
Conclusion
Despite a cinematic image based largely on the notion of the romantic hero, it is striking how rarely Clooney post-1996 has actually played such a role. Only in One Fine Day (and as a small-scale echo in The Magic Bubble) does he act as a clear repository for female desirability, uncomplicated with generic subtext (like his work with the Coen brothers) or matters of his own input as writer or director (like Leatherheads). In many other films, such as the Ocean’s series, his on-screen charm is key to his character’s success, but this is nearly always within a more generically complex narrative than a simple romance. The romantic pairings in all four films discussed in this chapter are passable but they all lack the intensity and frisson generated between Clooney and Lopez in Out of Sight (see chapter 5).
Intolerable Cruelty feels like an attempt to bring screwball up-to-date in its content, but this is always going to be difficult as this is a subgenre with specific historical roots and based on subtlety of wordplay and characterization. Unlike the generous tone of most classic screwball comedies, characters tend to operate in their own egocentric universes. Where such factors are taken into account (O Brother and, to a lesser extent, Clooney’s own Leatherheads) the result seems more generically harmonious and viewers are encouraged to laugh with characters, rather than at them.
Chapter 3
Action Hero (What Men Want)
Batman and Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997)
Remember everyone, this is a cartoon.
—Joel Schumacher1
I think we might have killed the franchise.
—George Clooney2
This is the sequel to Batman Forever (1995), also directed by Schumacher and scripted by Akiva Goldsman, and represents an effort by Warner Brothers to widen the profitability of the Batman franchise with more family-friendly content. However, this is also accompanied by a tendency toward lightweight plotting, garish colors, and the kind of melodramatic overacting associated with the long-running TV series Batman (ABC, 1966–68), and further from Tim Burton’s darker conception of Gotham in the first two films, Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992).
Perhaps it sounds perverse to criticize the film for being cartoonish, since that is the nature of its origins, but it is hard to find human qualities in the narrative with which to identify. In terms of generic expectations, it does not really deliver. There are fight sequences, but they are long, drawn-out affairs and several seem to achieve little beyond the destruction of scenery; and the sudden high-angle wide shots in such scenes feel like the style of the 1960s TV series with the obligatory “Pow!” signs appearing on screen. The visual styling is what predominates, and the upgrading of the Batmobile feels more like visiting a motor show than a movie theater. As an action movie, it lacks set-piece spectacular stunt work, the dialogue lacks witty Bond-like one-liners (an increasing part of the franchise), and there is no on-screen chemistry between Batman and his villainous adversary Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) or romantic tension with Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman).
The cartoonish visual style also contributes to a lack of narrative development. The plot seems to go from one set-piece so-called action scene to another with very little action on display or narrative jeopardy at stake. The film as a whole is very episodic with the sense that several of the scenes could happen in almost any order. We see a series of large interior spaces—Gotham Art Gallery, the Observatory (twice), and the Costume Ball to auction the diamonds—and yet they each look exactly like what they are: large film sets. The scene as Poison Ivy reclaims an old Turkish bath as her new base has a particularly pointless fight scene, which lasts only a few seconds, with Bane (Jeep Swenson) ejecting a group of curiously painted thugs (accompanied by a sound effect like an old-fashioned swanee whistle, more redolent of musical hall than contemporary cinema). Poison Ivy’s sidekick, Bane, looks like a WWF fighter in a gimp mask (not perhaps surprising since Swenson is a wrestler) who can only roar and throw people around. His sole piece of audible dialogue (“Bomb”) could be quite funny, like his final fate as a literally shrunken figure, lying on the ground if it
was meant ironically. A strangely similar scene in O Brother, where Delmar sees Pete’s clothes lying on a rock, yields comedy but here this is not possible as we never see Bane having any kind of emotional life.
Fight sequences are overtly choreographed with Batman and Robin (Chris O’Donnell) performing parallel kicks and backflips, and assailants attacking helpfully one at a time and all dressed in identical costume, identifying them as baddies, giving so-called action sequences the appearance of rehearsals. In the fight with the “hockey team from hell,” Batman’s attackers look like extras from Starlight Express, and the wire work with Batman and Freeze seems cumbersome and unbelievable as they seem able to jump out of trouble at any point. It is the same weakness in The Matrix (the Wachowski brothers, 1999), where Neo can apparently fly off at will, logically making the fight scenes redundant. The key difference is that viewers do not mind this as those fights are spectacular; here, they are just ponderous. The action sequences use a camera positioning almost permanently on an oblique tilt, and unlike Burton’s Gotham, here the cityscape and all the major landmarks (such as Arkham Asylum) look like models.
The stunts, such as Robin climbing up Freeze’s escape capsule, the jump from Arkham Asylum, or the final fall from the Observatory, all follow the laws of gravity or probability extremely selectively. That in itself does not stop films from working, but one has to believe that in the universe of the film such things are possible. Even where there is narrative jeopardy, suspense seems willingly avoided. We cut bizarrely and without explanation from a shot of Robin holding Barbara by a boot, dangling perilously off a bridge after being thrown from her bike, to the Wayne mansion with no explanation of how the pair escaped.
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