This film is a lot like Groundhog Day, the monotony of 10,000,000 miles might as well the repeating days, but a more pitiful one. Airports and schools (and libraries, and malls) are archetypal places symbolizing the temporal nature of earthly reality from one place to the next (reincarnation, hell, or ascension). The pilot at the end is mythic, a Demiurge. The audio goes quiet, the light around him shines. Clooney won at life... it is important in the pilot representing the Demiurge, he is representing capitalism, not enlightenment. So there's no reward, in fact he is disappointed, they both are. Spirituality is in alignment with capitalism in cinema, these tools, while incompatible, are simultaneously rhyming and opposing symbols of meaning. Clooney won but he lost by not perpetuating the journey to nirvana to extract meaning through family, relationships, and commitment; so he completed the journey but missed the point about sharing, giving, and providing. The movie is not too hard on him for sitting in his karmic lot, of course, the entire thing is a fabrication without an ounce of authenticity. It is as boring as his lectures to corporations.
The fact they fire people, in the film, it is really framed as tragedy, an assassination to be rejected by capitalism, which is nauseating cinematic hyperbole. "Go become a chef/vet/chef, your dream", is the answer that films like Fight Club, Pig, and Up in the Air give to capitalistic despair. Reitman is a director who pretends to be subtle while stating the obvious-- the way it fetishizes the performances of those people getting fired is unbelievably self-important. Compare the subtlety of Alexander Payne's The Descendents, also with Clooney, Payne can nail subtlety while simultaneously going mainstream. And Clooney played a hitman in another thing too, he is always 'the guy that does the thing'. But the concept of someone whose job is to fire people is also a non-starter. The girl quitting at the end is not a journey, it is the obvious thing to do on day one.
I saw it in 2009, I hated it then and I hate it now. It's a lousy movie as compared to Groundhog Day or The Terminal, both films I rated as five as masterpieces of symbology. This one is saying participating is not enough, but it stops before the second act to show his leap of faith. I should also say at the time of this in 2009, millennials, like Anna Kendrick, were entering into the work-force. Asserting meaning onto others through work is just the different side of the same coin, it is over-correcting being a corporate cog, by being a nuisance destroying the fabric of society. The same lesson goes to both sides of the aisle, 'work to live, don't live to work'. Only someone like Reitman would think this is a profound lesson, because he has never done either.
The fact they fire people, in the film, it is really framed as tragedy, an assassination to be rejected by capitalism, which is nauseating cinematic hyperbole. "Go become a chef/vet/chef, your dream", is the answer that films like Fight Club, Pig, and Up in the Air give to capitalistic despair. Reitman is a director who pretends to be subtle while stating the obvious-- the way it fetishizes the performances of those people getting fired is unbelievably self-important. Compare the subtlety of Alexander Payne's The Descendents, also with Clooney, Payne can nail subtlety while simultaneously going mainstream. And Clooney played a hitman in another thing too, he is always 'the guy that does the thing'. But the concept of someone whose job is to fire people is also a non-starter. The girl quitting at the end is not a journey, it is the obvious thing to do on day one.
I saw it in 2009, I hated it then and I hate it now. It's a lousy movie as compared to Groundhog Day or The Terminal, both films I rated as five as masterpieces of symbology. This one is saying participating is not enough, but it stops before the second act to show his leap of faith. I should also say at the time of this in 2009, millennials, like Anna Kendrick, were entering into the work-force. Asserting meaning onto others through work is just the different side of the same coin, it is over-correcting being a corporate cog, by being a nuisance destroying the fabric of society. The same lesson goes to both sides of the aisle, 'work to live, don't live to work'. Only someone like Reitman would think this is a profound lesson, because he has never done either.