I reached a point this summer where I let my self-consciousness get to me and stopped blogging out of fear that I was branding myself as “that unemployed girl.” A similar phenomenon occurred when I blogged my stimulator process a few years ago. After all, I reasoned, both then and now, self-pity doesn’t exactly make for good reading — or writing.
But lately, I’ve been missing it. Not having a job hasn’t stopped me from gaining insight about myself and the millions of other people paddling this boat with me. And when I had the chance to catch a free screening of the new George Clooney movie “Up in the Air,” I got the itch to blog again after watching Clooney’s character fire dozens of unsuspecting (albeit fictional) workers.
Before I get into the movie I want to briefly touch on the awesomeness that is entertainment on a shoestring budget. My boyfriend is incredibly adept at scoring free tickets to movies, the theater and even concerts. In the short few months we’ve been dating we’ve had box seats to “Animal Crackers” at the Goodman Theater; two pairs of free tickets to see The Pixies at the Aragon Ballroom, and movie passes to “World’s Greatest Dad” (including a Q and A with the director); Jim Carrey’s “A Christmas Carol” in 3-D; “A Serious Man;” and “Up In The Air.” Everything is more fun when it’s free.
Anyway. The timing of the “Up In The Air” screening couldn’t have been more unfortunate. I had just completed three grueling job interviews in three days, received disappointing news from two of them and correctly suspected the third wasn’t meant to be either. I was also beginning to feel the pressure of the end of my COBRA subsidy and was battling worries about running down the clock on unemployment insurance payments.
Because the screening for the movie was a couple weeks before the major release of the movie, I hadn’t yet read many reviews. All I knew was that George Clooney’s character works for a company that downsizes employees whose own companies can’t be bothered with the dirty work. Imagine your boss hiring someone else to give you the news. Ouch. What I didn’t realize was the extent to which this scenario is played out in the movie.
To add to the realism, director Jason Reitman filmed the reactions of real people — in addition to actors — upon finding out they’ve been let go. These scenes are used throughout the movie so they couldn’t all be avoided by a well-timed bathroom break. I had thought I’d gotten past the trauma that is hearing the news for the first time, but the scenes were so eloquently and accurately portrayed that it was like reliving the experience over, and over and over again.
The saving grace here is that Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham, stays respectful, sympathetic, professional and compassionate regardless of how an employee takes the news — be it threatening to jump off a bridge or bring a gun back to the office for revenge.
Bingham faces a challenge, however, when his boss informs him that to conserve costs, the company is considering using a technology along the lines of Skype that would allow them to fire people over the Internet. Bingham rightly insists that his responsibility is to provide a human touch at such a critical time. To prove this he takes the young business whiz that developed the Skype system on the road with him and teaches her the tricks of the trade. Watching the trainee, played beautifully by Anna Kendrick, crumble after firing her first worker face-to-face, is heartbreaking.
What’s not heartbreaking, however, is the skill and care with which Clooney’s character breaks the news and offers consolation to the recently terminated. His signature line of comfort, “Everyone that has ever conquered an empire or started a new corporation had to go through what you’re going through to get there,” sounds sincere whenever he says it. When recycled by other, lesser characters, it loses its ring.
In an especially moving scene with J.K. Simmons (aka Juno’s dad), Simmons’ character worries that he’s too old to start a new career or find a new job that can provide retirement benefits. Unbeknownst to him, Bingham has gone to the trouble of procuring the man’s resume and notes that before he accepted the job he was fired from 30 years later, he attended culinary school. Bingham explains that most people ditch pursuing their dream job in favor of a comfortable but not-quite-challenging career where they stay trapped for years. Being laid off, he rationalizes, gives them a second chance.
When this message is expressed with nuance, the being downsized experience almost becomes therapeutic — at least it was for me, almost 11 months after the fact. People always try to tell you this in subtle, tentative ways that make you immediately defensive.
In a lighter moment, Kendrick’s character asks Bingham if he ever does any follow-up with his clients, and he replies it’s usually not helpful. This made me feel sorry that I’ve had to contact my former HR person more times than I’ve wanted to regarding paperwork. I bet she thought the hard part was over too.
I was beginning to recover by the time the credits rolled on the movie, but Reitman uses the credits over which to dub more audio of real people talking about their layoffs. It even features a musician describing how he wrote his song, “Uncertainty,” about the experience, and soon he’s heard strumming his acoustic guitar. At that point I grabbed my boyfriend’s hand and insisted we get away from the theater before I ran out of dry tissues.
Although the experience of seeing “Up In The Air” was traumatic, I’m still glad I saw it, even though it dredged up some of the anger and shame I thought was gone. The movie never would’ve had the same resonance — in my humble opinion — if it’d been released when the national unemployment rate wasn’t 10 percent. Nothing makes an experience feel more universal than seeing it portrayed in an Oscar-bait film. I prefer to use movies as escapism these days and look to the nightly news and documentaries for my dose of realism. Even still, it’d be a thrill to get fired by George Clooney.
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