Down... on the Ground

This post was intended to analyze the similarities and differences between Up in the Air, Fish Tank and An Education, but unfortunately it proved to be a rather uninteresting exercise in surface observations and difficult prose. So I scrapped the idea, but salvaged the only thing worth taking from it: my disdain for Up in the Air. So apologies for the jumpiness and inconclusive arguments, but I thought it might be of some interest regardless. For those who haven't seen the films, I wouldn't recommend reading as this is infested with “spoilers.”

As we’re nearing the half-way point in 2010, I took a look back at what few ’09 releases I actually saw, and one trend really stood out: marital and parental escapism. In three of the notable award contenders of 2009—Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and Lone Scherfig’s An Education—the very same third act revelation appears as the protagonists make an uninvited visit to the homes of their respective lovers, discovering that their romantic flames are not only frauds, but frauds with spouses and children.

For Up in the Air’s Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a man whose views of romance are mirrored (of course) by his on-the-go career which keeps him in transit for the majority of his time, a hotel bar encounter with a woman like Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) leads to the most ideal of no-strings-attached affairs. Alex is a woman, seemingly, like Ryan: professional, mature, horny and uninterested in anything related to our traditional notions of maintaining a romantic relationship with someone. Through several different scenarios where Ryan is forced to interact with people whose notions of relationship stability greatly differ from his own, he undergoes a change of heart and falls for Alex in a way he’s likely never felt for anyone else.

In an attempt to compare/contrast An Education and Fish Tank, I hit a dead end, as they’re almost too similar. Both feature teenage girls as protagonists, their older love interests (Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Fassbender) are deceptively charming and both films happen to be directed by women. The only thing truly dividing them from a narrative perspective is their place in time and the issue of class. An Education’s Jenny (Carey Mulligan) comes from a typical middle class English family in the early 1960s, while Fish Tank’s Mia (Katie Jarvis) lives in the outskirts with her young, hot, single mother (Kierston Wareing) and little sister (Rebecca Griffiths). Their differences in quality, which is a steep one, can best be chalked up to the flatness and dryness of Scherfig’s images against the vividness and vibrancy of Arnold’s.

With surprising consistency, Jenny, Mia and Ryan’s worlds are all crushed through uninvited visits to their respective lovers’ homes. It was, after all, too good to be true for each of them, but the lessons aren’t all the same. For Up in the Air, Alex’s “other life” becomes just one of the film’s infuriatingly heavy-handed views of the traditional family structure. Alex is not only villainized through the revelation but all of the refreshing qualities that Ryan found in her morph into the traits of an unhappy wife and mother acting out. While it seemed relatively clear that Ryan’s young co-worker/traveling companion Natalie Keener’s (Anna Kendrick) function in the film was to give (false) validation to Ryan’s beliefs, Natalie’s purpose changes when the film places its scarlet letter upon Alex, as she starts to work as a defense for the screenwriters (and novelist, I suppose, though I haven’t read the book) in showing us that all women aren’t cruel, manipulative, heart-stomping adulteresses. It’s hard to determine whether the simple, vile justification of Alex’s away-from-home behavior or the nauseating placement of the interview footage of the real people laid off from their jobs where they all emphasize the importance of family is what ultimately destroys Up in the Air, but both elements certainly succeed in ridiculing the protagonist… or maybe we should have never trusted a filmmaker who tried to garner sympathy for a character who crushes other people’s lives as a trade.

All three films are available on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK. Up in the Air and An Education are available on Blu-ray and DVD in the US, and Fish Tank will be released by Criterion later in the year.

...aaaaaand it starts again.

The National Board of Review tossed out their annual film awards this afternoon. Almost always the first to do so, the NBR awards aren't typically the most respectable of the end-of-the-year critics' prizes (remember when they named Quills the best picture of 2000?), but since they've been announced, it means that award season is in full swing. Expect plenty of other Film Circles to reveal their winners throughout the month. Awards below:

Best Picture: Up in the Air, d. Jason Reitman
Best Director: Clint Eastwood - Invictus
Best Actor: (tie) Morgan Freeman - Invictus; George Clooney - Up in the Air
Best Actress: Carey Mulligan - An Education
Best Supporting Actor: Woody Harrelson - The Messenger
Best Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick - Up in the Air
Best Foreign Film: A Prophet [Un prophète], d. Jacques Audiard, France
Best Documentary: The Cove, d. Louie Psihoyos
Best Animated Feature: Up, d. Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
Best Ensemble Cast: It's Complicated
Breakthrough Performance by an Actor: Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker
Breakthrough Performance by an Actress: Gabourey Sidibe - Precious
Spotlight Award for Best Directorial Debut: (tie) Duncan Jones - Moon; Oren Moverman - The Messenger; Marc Webb - (500) Days of Summer
Special Filmmaking Achievement Award: Wes Anderson - The Fantastic Mr. Fox
William K. Everson Film History Award: Jean Picker Firstenberg
NBR Freedom of Expression: (tie) Burma VJ; Invictus; The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellseberg and the Pentagon Papers

Top 10 Films (After Up in the Air), alphabetically

(500) Days of Summer, d. Mark Webb
An Education, d. Lone Scherfig
The Hurt Locker, d. Kathryn Bigelow
Inglourious Basterds, d. Quentin Tarantino
Invictus, d. Clint Eastwood
The Messenger, d. Oren Moverman
A Serious Man, d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Star Trek, d. J.J. Abrams
Up, d. Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
Where the Wild Things Are, d. Spike Jonze


Top 10 "Independent" Films, alphabetically

Amreeka, d. Cherien Dabis
District 9, d. Neill Blomkamp
Goodbye Solo, d. Ramin Bahrani
Humpday, d. Lynn Shelton
In the Loop, d. Armando Iannucci
Julia, d. Erick Zonca
Me and Orson Welles, d. Richard Linklater
Moon, d. Duncan Jones
Sugar, d. Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Two Lovers, d. James Gray


Top 5 Foreign Films (After A Prophet), alphabetically

The Maid [La nana], d. Sebastián Silva, Chile/Mexico
Revanche, d. Götz Spielmann, Austria
Song of Sparrows, d. Majid Majidi, Iran
Three Monkeys [Üç maymun], d. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey
The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band], d. Michael Haneke, Austria/Germany/France/Italy


Top 5 Docmentary Films (After The Cove), alphabetically

Burma VJ, d. Anders Østergaard
Crude, d. Joe Berlinger
Food, Inc., d. Robert Kenner
Good Hair, d. Jeff Stilson
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, d. Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith