Security World

George Clooney, who plays Ryan Bingham in Up in the Air, at Cannes in 2016. Event portrait, not a film still. Photo: Georges Biard , CC BY-SA 3.0 . Display size adjusted; source photograph unchanged. Up in the Air asks what a life looks like when movement becomes a form of stability. Ryan Bingham knows the routines of travel and takes comfort in a system he can navigate. The difficulty is whether that fluency has become a way of avoiding relationships whose demands cannot be reduced to a familiar procedure. Jason Reitman directs the 2009 film, starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick. The AFI record credits Reitman and Sheldon Turner as screenwriters, adapting Walter Kirn’s novel, and identifies the central roles: Clooney’s Ryan Bingham, Farmiga’s Alex Goran and Kendrick’s Natalie Keener. Professional confidence is not the same as emotional certainty Ryan’s work involves delivering other people’s employment losses. The contrast between his practised manner and the c...