Paper

Paper on Up in the Air (2009)

Please answer one (and only one!) of the following five questions.

To stimulate your thinking about the film, here is a review in The New Yorker ; here by the independent film critic Roger Ebert; here on the web site “Spirituality and Practice.”

Cite the articles by Robert Solomon and Joanne Ciulla simply by page: for example, (Solomon 577). If possible, cite the movie by minute and second: for example, (45:16). There is no need for a list of works cited.

1) What is the “life plan”—recalling Robert Solomon’s article—of the George Clooney character, Ryan Bingham? What are his priorities, needs, ideals, and aspirations? How would he, or does he through the way he lives, answer the twelve questions in Solomon’s article (pages 578-579)? Focus on two or three of those questions.

2) What do you think of Ryan Bingham’s “life plan”? Does it include what Robert Solomon calls “the essentials of the good life” (page 577)? Further, how do the women who enter Bingham’s life call that “life plan” into question? Consider Alex Goran (played by Vera Farmiga), Natalie Keener (played by Anna Kendrick), and Ryan’s sister Kara (played by Amy Morton).

3) Joanne Ciulla writes that, “[i]n our society, work shapes your life and your identity. What you do…has a lot to do with who you are” (page 583). Ryan Bingham’s job, firing people, is about cutting people loose, breaking the relationship between employee and employer. His job fits him. Perhaps we could say it symbolizes him: it stands in for what he is about or like. How is his job expressive of his life? What does the fact that he is good at his job tell us about him as a person? Could he have changed his life fundamentally, say by beginning a committed relationship with Alex (if she too had been single), and remained good at his job? (Note that he was unable to give his “Backpack” speech when he decided that he wanted a relationship with Alex.)

4) When Alex’s husband asks who is at the door, Alex replies, “It’s just someone who’s lost.” Is that true of Ryan? Is he lost at the movie’s end, or has he found himself at all? Explain.

5) What to make of the fact that Ryan’s younger sister’s fiancé, Jim, is reading The Velveteen Rabbit when Ryan enters the room to talk with him? The Velveteen Rabbit is the story of a stuffed rabbit who yearns to become “real,” which can happen only if he is loved. (Or, is it only if he loves?) Is Ryan “really alive” throughout the movie? Is he “really living”? Does he become “real” at the movie’s end? (Note that Kara says to Ryan before he talks with Jim, “Basically, you don’t exist to us.”)