Ryan Bingham: Loner to a Committed Person
Jason Reitman’s ‘Up in the Air’ is about the transformation of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) from a loner to a person who understands the value of relationships. Ryan Bingham’s job was to fire people. He was a corporate downsizing expert who travelled all over the country just to fire people. He was a happy and goal oriented business traveler who was not committed to any kind of relationships in life, and transformed into a caring human being after realizing the value of social connections by going through pain, heartbreak and loneliness.
Ryan was a single, happy man leading and enjoying his life without any rules and relationships. He travelled a lot, stayed in luxury hotels, and lived out of a suitcase. He was very happy to be on the move all the time, and his home was the airplane and the airport terminals. The hotels he stayed were his home when he was not travelling. "Last year I spent 322 days on the road, which meant I spent 43 miserable days at home"( Ryan Bingham). He carried all that he needed in one suitcase and was a member of every elite travel rewards program in existence, very close to attaining his lifetime goal of 10 million frequent flier miles. Ryan felt that life’s backpack was filled with relationships and emotions, and it weighed a person down, hence he avoided it. In his opinion relationships are the heaviest components in life. “You get them into that backpack; feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life”( Ryan Bingham). So Ryan never had a solid relationship with either of his sisters or with anyone else. He talked to his sisters once in a while, but was never present in their lives. He was extremely happy with the way he led his life and never felt a need for a companion in his life. His older sister Kara called him and left a message and that was how he found out that his other sister Julie was getting married. Kara told him that...