Up in the Air - Page 3

When he got out of the cab I said someone else would be there, but I didn't expect a family.

I'm in the camp that says she misled him. I thought that was what attracted him to her; they supposedly shared the same outlook on relationships. For her to have a family, made everything she said a lie. She violated the most critical element of any relationship - trust.

Yes, Alex did mislead him. But why did she give him her home address in the first place? Even a Christmas card from an unfamiliar sender with an undoubtedly sexy reference in it would be hard to explain away to her stay-at-home(?) husband, wouldn't it?

I assume her husband is far more stay-at-home than she is, anyway. She mentioned the pitfalls of the wife making more money than the husband, but are we to assume her husband is practically "Mr. Mom"? She had a couple of youngish children. If her husband isn't "Mr. Mom", then how much less responsible is she than Ryan that she has committed to establishing a family but spends so much time on the road?

Which leaves us with the probable conclusion that Alex IS what Ryan would be like if he had married and started a family while maintaining his business travel schedule (as Alex did). The androgyny of their names is a cute touch and might be a hint in that direction. And that also contributes to the conclusion that his decision to reject the conventional married-with-children route is more honest, less hypocritical than Alex's decision to play both sides of fence, however "up in the air" that might leave him in his personal life.

His life, while maybe unsatisfying and unconventional, was more honest while hers is decidedly not honest. She has been misleading EVERYONE in her life. While Ryan may not have much to offer anyone, at least he's honest about it.

After I posted, I was driving to town and remembered Alex giving Ryan her address and thought how stupid that was. Today I see hitchfan’s post, and it’s the first time its been brought up in this thread. I suppose it could be said she did it because subconsciously she wanted to be caught, but her response at the door and on the phone doesn’t support that. Maybe we’re all so caught up in how much we enjoyed the film, we’re overlooking the obvious; we were manipulated. In order for the film to have the ending we saw, it needed something like that to happen. Other movies have been criticized and ripped for jerking us around, yet no one has taken this film to task for possibly the same thing. It doesn’t take away my enjoyment of the film, but it does drop it down a notch from what I almost consider perfection. I haven’t come up with a reason for why she did such a stupid thing, so until someone can come up with a viable explanation, I think we were had. JMO. YMMV.

wear her wedding ring during her travels (at least I don't remember seeing it).

Almost anything would work.
Perhaps he discovered her address on the Internet or rifled her purse while she was asleep.
I am amazed the filmmaker let this go.
Otherwise, as you said, this is a perfect movie.

...Alex giving Ryan her home address. She was misleading him. She wanted him to think she was as free as he was. If she had refused to give him her address after establishing more than a single one-night-stand with him, that would have given away her secret.

However, what if she had given him a bogus home address just to set aside an awkward issue? The only way he would have found out it was a bogus address was if he had tried to contact her through it, which is what she says she never would have wanted anyway and, apparently, spelled the end of their (her) little fantasy.

So, what does that leave us (if we are not willing to take that glitch as an unforgiveable cheat in the script)?

It leaves us with another possibility; For Alex, Clooney was simply too good looking, too charming, too easy as an ongoing on-the-road booty call to pass up and not cultivate, along with a selfish motivation to keep her fantasy going about being as free as he was. And that her giving him her real home address was a chance worth taking...on her assumption that he would never actually try to contact her through it any more than she would show up unannounced at his front door.

However, that doesn't explain her righteous indignation, to the point of being insulting and hurtful to him, over the fact that he did contact her through it. This, I feel, is the moment where the script faltered. SHE should have been a lot less indignant, a lot more apologetic and HE should have been ripping her a new one. But neither happened.

I believe this lack of clarity about who was wronged here adds to a certain weakness I found in the final moments of the movie. It almost looks like Ryan is too dim-witted to figure out he was the one who should have been indignant.

ON THE OTHER HAND, how is his inability to fathom and articulate his reaction to such a sucker punch to the gut any different than the reaction of those people sitting across the desk from him dozens of times per week getting sacked? hmm.

Ryan = honest, true to his values until he tastes a little more happiness than he's used to that creates a wiggle in his world view. He checks it out, get's slammed, but ultimately takes it as a learning experience and as an adult. He's grown some. Within his limits, he's an admirable character.

Alex = honest within a very narrow parameter. She'll be completely candid with her views, but outside of that she lives dishonestly. We don't know to what degree, but she's far from admirable. In effect, I consider her a normal person with some demons. Normal folks f'up and reveal things that ultimately hurt them...like home addresses. It could have been disastrous for her, but, in part due to Ryan, she dodged a bullet.

I don't think it's a weakness in the script. It's a plot device, but a very human error nonetheless. When you're cheating, you always f'up (take it from me ). Human errors were my modus operandi until I grew up...last week.

I don’t think it was Alex’s first rodeo. I rarely nitpick, but that was a mistake that just doesn’t work for me. Having Ryan arrive at her doorstep by unscrupulous means, if you want to call it that, would have been perfect. Everything else could have remained the same.

I’ve been around the block once or twice myself, and giving a home address or phone number is inconceivable, especially to volunteer it. As I recall, Ryan didn’t ask for it, she willingly gave it to him.

her home address (when it wasn't necessary to for her to carry on the "relationship") freely is hard to reconcile with her demonstrated IQ up until that point in the film.

...I also don't remember a scene where they discussed each other's marital status. Maybe something was said about it, but I don't remember it.

I suppose we were supposed to assume those two topics (their marital status and home addresses/home phone numbers) were broached at some point but those scenes weren't shown to us. Convenient way to deal with the fact that they needed to play a little loose with those points in order to get to the scenes they wanted to show us, I suppose...

I'm not entirely opposed to filmmakers downplaying an inconvenient issue or two for the sake of dramatic license. In fact, I think it's rare when a dramatic piece doesn't do it somewhere at some point, often on a key issue.

Although I didn't remember a moment where she gave him her home address, I just assumed she had given it to him legitimately because she didn't make a big deal about how he got it in the confrontation scene after the scene at her front door, "How did you get my home address?!" kind of thing.