Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air continues the talented director’s trend of smart, sharply-executed, and slyly sweet films. It delivers a splendidly rounded cast of characters and a genuinely moving tale while managing to remain topical in the best of ways. Reitman’s policy of “let the film play, and the humor will come” works brilliantly, and turns out to work just as well for the entire range of emotions the movie engenders. It’s this demonstration of restraint, and the ability to execute it without losing any sense of artistic adventurousness, that makes the movie one of the year’s best.

Up in the Air excels in peppering itself with little details and subtle flourishes, fortifying the expression of its biggest and most poignant ideas through a chain of miniscule movements that quietly reveal themselves with lingering effect. The film is exceptionally good at sticking to the telling of an honest story, avoiding the pitfalls of faux grandiosity by letting the truth of the characters power the story. This is what makes it so effective a movie about the present. The flutter of comedy and ache of tragedy are inherent in the moments, and by letting those moments stand by themselves without embellishment, the audience is able to recognize something simultaneously familiar and new in the movie. Familiar in that we know the situations and can sympathize with the hardships of a whimpering economy; new in that we notice how those same situations are funny or sad in unexpected ways.

George Clooney is the obvious standout here. He takes a character that you would hate to like — oozing with charm and professionalism, and exceedingly aware of it — and imbues him with vulnerability, humor, and humanity. He’s irreverently content with his own emotional isolation, and even has a side job delivering motivational speeches that argue for us to dump our possessions and relationships to avoid the baggage they inevitably and needlessly create. And yet Clooney is able to infuse what could have easily been an irritatingly cheeky character with a good nature and an unmanufactured warmth to render Bingham into a genuinely likable person. When he does eventually start to change, it’s an organic kind of growth that carries with it an exhilarating uncertainty, and Clooney is able to slip seamlessly into this newly fragile and exposed state. Over the course of the film, he doesn’t so much fall apart as he is restructured, and Clooney navigates the subtle epiphanic moments with a deceptively complex performance.

It would, however, be remiss to not talk about the incredibly strong supporting performances that Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick deliver. As the two chief women in Bingham’s life, Farmiga’s Alex and Kendrick’s Natalie offer richly realized counterpoints through which we can better understand him. Alex is so much Bingham’s kindred spirit that they offer a shockingly convincing portrait of how easily two people can find happiness in an empty way of life. Farmiga plays her with a smooth coolness that belies how layered the character really is. Natalie is the young upstart who values everything Bingham does not — namely, love and companionship. But she finds something worth respecting In Bingham’s surprising compassion for the people he fires and his reverence for the sanctity of such a job. Kendrick perfectly balances a hyper-structured confidence with a tenuously maintained fragility. Her naivete mixed with her sharp wit reveals the humor in many otherwise mundane situations, and her scenes with Clooney are among the film’s best moments.

Though the film is far from technically perfect, to dwell on any of its minute flaws would be missing the point. Reitman has crafted another wonderfully nuanced film and shepherded it to fruition. In the process, he draws out what is perhaps the most relatable and well-rounded performance of Clooney’s career. But the film’s greatest strength is its ability to convincingly make an argument for the simple power of human empathy and relationships, and without inundating us with an overdose of sentimentality. Its cresting final moments stand as a suiting metaphor for the film’s optimism — soaring, but not immune to the realities of heartbreak and loss. Reitman’s film ends up being appropriately titled — for a phrase so commonly used as a term of uncertainty, Reitman and his cast have rendered it to signify an unexpected but firmly transcendent experience.

Tags: Anna Kendrick, George Clooney, Jason Reitman, Review, Up In The Air, Vera Farmiga