“There’s nothing cheap about loyalty” - Up In The Air (2009)
Up in the Air (2009) dir. Jason Reitman
I was 13 in 2009, so I didn’t see Up In The Air when it came out in theaters. But I did see the crash of 2008, see my parents tearfully close their travel agency and lay off their employees, and see my mom go back to school to become a teacher. So I relate to the world of the film on those terms.
Losing your income impacts lives; it impacts moms, dads, kids. On some psychological level I think my parents losing their agency is why I always wanted to be a writer and director after high school, because I:
can choose my own hours
my success or failure depends entirely on my work ethic, and
movies seemed to be recession proof (if anything, sad people watch more YouTube, movies and TV)
I have two brothers who are in business school now, one in undergrad and one an MBA candidate. I am sort of the “black sheep,” badass middle child who went to film school on a full scholarship. I think all three of us first-generation Indian-American men got a “be your own boss” mentality from the recession. So I went to film school, and my brothers went to business school.
When I was in my junior year of film school at Temple University, I had Gustavo Mercado’s Filmmaker’s Eye in my lap and a Sour Diesel blunt in the ashtray. I was scrolling through Amazon Prime Video and I saw Up In The Air. So I watched it because in his book Mercado refers to a scene in the film. And there it was, right in front of me! Thanks to Jeff Bezos and the Prime Video team.
I rewatched the film recently on Hulu (founded by former Amazon executive Jason Kilar) and it still feels relevant and fresh. How do streaming deals even work? They didn’t have a class on that at Temple. I’ll just have to learn it in life, I suppose.
Watching it again today took me back to my Philly student apartment at The View, where I became a raving fan. I did Ryan’s monologue in an acting class. I broke down his packing-to-fly sequence in Act I for a scene analysis class (I counted 72 cuts, 24 of which are just him packing his bag). One line Reitman wrote stuck to me as I wrote this piece, originally for Medium:
“There’s nothing cheap about loyalty.”
It’s hard to stick to a philosophy, be it “I live for my boyfriend” like Natalie or “I live to get 10 million miles” like Ryan. Or “I am going to film school at all costs to be like Martin Scorsese,” for me.
Writing is hard to do. Directing is hard to do. Especially when your MBA older brother tells you his internship offered $3000 a week.
HIS INTERNSHIP OFFERS 3K A WEEK?! My internships were all unpaid!
But again, there’s nothing cheap about loyalty. You have to have good habits, and stick to them even if they get boring.
Ryan Bingham’s philosophy of isolation is challenged by three sets of women in his life: his two sisters, one of whom is going to be married; Alex (Vera Farmiga), a woman he meets while at work; and Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a young hotshot with big ideas about the future of virtual downsizing (this was 2009, before Zoom layoffs became commonplace in 2020).
In the end Ryan doesn’t really change as a character, but he is a little more grounded. His philosophy is challenged, and he learns that it is not bad to call home once in a while and be there for big moments in the lives of friends and family.
As a kid I initially thought friends and family were suffocating, even “out to get me” and embarrass me.
But now as a working adult I have learned that the world is indifferent to your feelings, and you do have to make time for your friends and family while they are still with you. Because for better or for worse, humans are social creatures who crave community.
I have an aunt who was let go from her high-paying job at TD Bank after 11 years with the company. She had a hard time finding a job for eight months after that because essentially, HR repeatedly thought she got too cozy at TD. The people hiring her were like “you are married to this job, but you should have been dating around.”
But again, there’s nothing cheap about loyalty. Family is loyal. Friends are loyal. Jobs aren’t always loyal. Even if you are there for a long time and think they will be loyal to you, they won’t be. You can always be replaced (which inversely means, you can always replace someone else too).
As Jason Reitman writes, people or characters like Ryan exist to “make limbo tolerable… to ferry wounded souls across the river of dread and humiliation to the point at which hope’s bright shore is dimly visible… And then to stop the boat, shove ’em in the water, and make them swim.”
God damn Jason Reitman sure is good at his craft.
