Last fall, Jason Reitman’s third film, “Up in the Air,” was warmly greeted by critics and audiences. Reitman has made some good movies, but this is his finest film.
Why? Because the movie is a portrait, both funny and sad in equal measure, of the current American landscape.
The story of Ryan Bingham is a modern day parable. It looks into the current economic crisis, as well as how electronics are widening the gap between people.
But, will this modern American parable be relevant in 10 years? How about 50?
I think it will. The story will be something of a time capsule future generations will be able to look at and understand the way this decade ended. The millennium began with promise. But, 21 months later, there was Sept. 11, and a few years later there was Iraq. And, then, of course, the decade closed with the most devastating economic crisis since the Great Depression.
There are countless movies that have come out over the years that try to light-heartedly tackle the real-world anxieties of their respective decades like “Up in the Air.”
For example, “Sullivan’s Travels,” the wonderful 1941 film directed by Preston Sturges, focuses on a man being awoken to the grievances of poverty.
Like Reitman, Sturges fills his film with intense drama while maintaining a lighthearted and comedic tone.
Sturges captures the feeling of the first days of the ’40s, that awkward moment in time when America was on the brink of World War II and still stuck in the Depression. This film has staying power because of that captured feeling.
Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” takes out all the comedy and substitutes drama. The film, which explores the foundations of the Cold War, is a direct response to McCarthy and HUAC. Kazan made the film after being blacklisted as a communist sympathizer.
I don’t think “Up in the Air” is as good as either of these films, but I do believe that it will have staying power. I don’t even think that “Up in the Air” is the best topical film of the last decade.
Instead, that title goes to 2006’s “United 93.” In focusing on one of the doomed planes on Sept. 11, Paul Greengrass drains story out the film and goes for a visceral reality shot.
It may be the best movie that surfaced from a moment of emotion, but I don’t think that it will have the staying power of other, older period pieces. Ultimately, it won’t have the emotional punch for audiences that didn’t live through the events.
Mike Nichols’s 1968 film “The Graduate” exists on the same level as “United 93” for the same reasons.
Youths in the ’60s understood Nichols’ film and the way it captured their confusion, but it’s too attached to that decade to last as anything but a capsule of emotions.
The movies that truly leave lasting impressions are the films that balance momentary feelings and emotions as resonant today as they were a century ago.
Of course, there is no way to know how films like “Up in the Air” and “United 93” will stand the test of time. Will they be classics or just flashes in the pan of cinema history?
Peterson Hill is a senior in New College. His entertainment column runs on Wednesday.
