SPOILER ALERT: I didn’t see it coming. Did you? I believed that the woman in Up in the Air was every bit as busy as Clooney with her crazy flight and work schedule. It was difficult for me to imagine a woman being able to manage the emotions of the intensifying relationship between them, though, and then turn her back and catch a plane, but I chalked it up to one more aspect of contemporary society that I don’t understand emotionally. I figured maybe young women today are possibly more inured to heartbreaks, both the getting and the giving, since so many topics are so openly discussed in public these days. Maybe this is what the level playing field looks like: we are all able to use each other, men and women alike.
I thought, But I know myself. If I had spent that much wonderful time with Ryan (George Clooney), I’d have wanted more than the occasional airport tryst. I’d have tried to keep my head, but my heart would have been racing ahead to thoughts such as, This feels different. I really like this man. I’d like to see more of him. I’d like a normal relationship. The Road Warrior life wears a woman down. I know. I did it for a few years and couldn’t tell the difference between Arizona and Connecticut because all I saw was the inside of airports and hotels.
So in the movie of the giant role reversal — as Ryan/Clooney feels his own passion build, leaves the podium from a speaking engagement, and flies to Alix’s home in Chicago presumably to profess his love — we are asked to believe that the loving, attentive, sexy woman he has fallen for has been playing him the way generations of men have done the same to unsuspecting women across the country.
We learn she has a husband, and children: she has what she calls a real life. That her time spent with Ryan/Clooney is a diversion.
I don’t buy it.
You can’t just write a man’s perspective into a women’s role in a script and expect me to believe that’s how a woman would behave. I don’t care which generation she calls home. This woman was aware of her own feelings, and those of her lover Ryan/Clooney. We are asked to forget about any guilt or shame or ambivalence she might feel as a wife and mother, and believe that she would not inadvertently display some of this pathos in her behavior.
This movie is based on a novel, written (this is no surprise) by a man.
I’d rather have seen the same story written by a woman and directed by Nancy Meyers. Then I’ll bet we’d have had more than a gotcha cartoon.
What do you think of the man scorned turn of this movie?
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AARRGGGH!!!! SeaWriter, couldn’t you have typed SPOILER ALERT early on in your entry?
Calming down. I’m not surprised at your reaction to the film, though I haven’t seen it but plan to…calming down. The screenplay was not only adapted from a male novelist’s book, but written by two young men. Mainly, this is the work of director Jason Reitman, that spoiled, posterboy-for-nepotism brat who pouted at the Golden Globes awards show after not progressing beyond his nominations.
Would the film have worked if the woman character had been the same age (or older) as Clooney’s character?
We have no choice but to write/adapt/produce/direct/greenlight the films we want to see.
Happy writing.
P.S. I’m happy to see that you’re now a blogger, and I will subscribe to your blog. (Noted that you’ve been blogging for two months now–I must have been asleep at the keyboard.)
Hi yakkity,
I’m sorry about the spoiler alert thing! I thought I had made it clear enough when I wrote that if you haven’t seen this movie, you might not want to read further. Ill send Marilyn a note and ask if she can insert SPOILER ALERT into the heading somewhere. Thanks for the heads up.
You know a lot about Reitman and I love the way you describe him above. I tell you, this kind of stuff make me nuts. This guy doesn’t understand anything beyond the tip of his own you-know-what.
Thanks for the comments about my writing. I’m just now finishing the synopsis for my memoir which I’m submitting to a competition at the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association. I’ll tell you this much: it’s no Jason Reitman script. I’d love to see Nancy Meyers get her hands on it, though!
Good to hear from you.
Wishing you success with the competition, and I admire your bravery in entering a memoir in an open contest. I know I don’t have to tell you this but, as a reminder, read the contest’s fine print before submitting your memoir.
Happy writing.
Good advice. Why do you think it’s brave to submit a memoir, though? It is a separate category at PNWA, so I’ll be swimming with all the writers who have done thrilling and titillating things. Mine is more a story of living through one trauma after another and finding grace in meaning. Who was it who said this? ”Life isn’t one thing after another; life is the same damn thing over and over again.” it’s on the tip of my tongue, but gone.
SeaWriter:
Please accept my apology: upon rereading and taking my meds, I realize that your title warns of SPOILER, but it’s ambiguous. Certain people get accustomed to the phrase SPOILER ALERT and, due to aging and skipping her meds, can’t conform to any other means of warning.
y1
funny! I just wrote to Marilyn about this and hope she can insert the words SPOILER ALERT as you suggested. I totally agree with you. I hadn’t had enough coffee when I posted this morning, I think!
Did I see it coming that she was already married with children? About the time he drove up in front of her home, I thought “whoops, she isn’t available”.
But up til that point it wasnt clear how they wre portraying her character. Maybe conflicted. They didn’t write the character consistently. There was one scene that — in hindsight — you could have said was a hint…..the one in which she was describing her dream guy to the younger woman, and she smiled and had a faraway look in her eye when she referenced children.
But other scenes–particularly the ones with just her and Clooney–nope didn’t see it coming until it was almost there. They showed several scenes that suggested she wanted more from him and had feelings for him==just maybe. How easily she went with him to Wisconsin for his sisters wedding.
These scenes suggested to me she had a growing emotional attachment to him, not a fantasy “away from home” thing going on.
Can women do that? Sure. I’ve known women who did. Could I? Nope. But then again the joke is that I married every man I ever slept with.
Its not quite true…………….but its not that far off either~!
My husband and I saw this movie over the weekend on the advice of a co-worker that it was soooo funny. We found it sad very uncomfortable…..too real since one my husband of 22 years had an affair that actually so he says started on airplan …and the faces of individuals being let go …struck my husbands deepest phobias of loosing his job…what an in you face…gotcha, psych trip…and I paid what for this experience …you know had interesting conversaion on the way back home lol Sandy
I didn’t see it coming. The only hint was a line in which she said something about how different she could be with him than she was at home. I think it did serve the plot though…it made his character a little sadder, a little emptier, a little more stuck with life passing him by. Will he be happy? Made me think of a scene in Marley and Me. (Oh, the failing brain – can’t remember names) The main character bumps into his best friend who is a hotshot foreign correspondent. I got the feeling that they both took a moment to think about what might have been and then squared their shoulders and went back (mentally) to their own lives. Oh for the road not taken.
Joyful53, sigh. The road not taken, indeed. I agree that the woman’s marriage and ultimate unavailability to Ryan/Clooney made his character sadder and emptier.
A male friend of mine who was a corporate attorney and traveled for many years attests to the existence of women like this — he said they called them “the cold ones” and that they managed to have affairs on the road and families at home.
I wonder whether they’re still married to those spouses, and how their children are today.
I know it is sexist – but as hard a time as I have understanding men having affairs, I have even a harder time imagining women (or maybe just myself) having an affair when there are children at home. On the other hand, the women I met when my husband was in law school were very busy trying to prove themselves as good as a man, which at that time was interpreted as the SAME as a man and perhaps that was part of your friend’s experience. These women were tougher, colder than the women I was meeting at the same time in the graduate school of education.
Up in the Air had a certain poignancy for me. I’ve talked a little about my new honey – he has been on the road doing sports broadcasting for the last 25 years or so. He never married and really didn’t have too many relationships. Now we’re together and he’s having to do a little settling down, though I don’t expect him to stop travelling (nor after living with the same man for 30 years – do I really mind). But it is an adjustment for him and I wonder if he’s prepared…both for the responsibility and for sometimes missing me horribly. On the other hand, maybe I’m his mid-life crisis and his chance to have what he hasn’t had up until now. Time will tell….but I’ll be glad when the Olympics are over and he’s here for a bit!!
joyful53, You have seen women like this, so you know they exist. I agree with you that women are as capable of being hurtful to their families as men are, but it is hard to understand.
I believe there would be some spoken or behavioral suggestion–no matter how small–of conflict in such a woman, especially a woman who has small children at home, unless we’re stepping into the realm of psychopathology, which I do not believe was the movie’s intent.
She is missing soccer games and teachers’ meetings, school recitals and spelling bees; in other words, she’s missing her children’s childhood by being on the road constantly. That has to evince some discomfort and regret in a normal woman because she has been socialized in such a way that her behavior contradicts her deeply seated idea of what it is to be a mother. I just didn’t find the movie character’s little talk about “expectations” to be a strong enough rationale or counterbalance.
I hope all goes well for your husband in Vancouver. It sounds to me as if you were blessed to find each other, and I’m very happy that you did.