Guy Sez: I’d like to say this is a movie about San Francisco. There are several shots of San Francisco from the air, a few scenes in the airport and one of a female star explaining why she moved to Omaha:

San Francisco Manager: So, what happened?
Natalie Keener: How exactly do you mean?
San Francisco Manager: You graduated top of your class. You could have had your pick of employment, including right here. Instead, you went to Omaha to… fire people for a living?
Natalie Keener: Challenging work.
San Francisco Manager: I’ll say. I couldn’t imagine doing that day in and day out. Especially not in this climate.
Natalie Keener: I… followed a boy.
San Francisco Manager: I guess we’ve all done that at some point in our lives.

But no. It’s about America. Modern, impersonal, corporate America. The world of airport lounges and identical hotel rooms. The procedures of security and check-in. Loyalty cards and status.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is the opposite of a corporate headhunter. He’s a headkicker, firing employees of downsized corporations. He’s always on the move around the country, terminating people by batches in Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, Tulsa…

His life is airline lounges and hotel chains, rental cars and living out of a carry-on bag. He lives for airmiles, platinum status, check-in speed and efficiency in travel, possessions and relationships. He’s also a motivational speaker, spreading his lean gospel:

Ryan: How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. Now, I want you to pack it with all the stuff you have in your life. You start with the little things: the shelves and drawers and nicknacks. Then you start adding larger stuff: clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… Your backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home. I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now, I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office. Then you move into the people that you trust with your most intimate secrets. Brothers, your sisters, your parents, your children. And finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack. Feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components of your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets and compromises. The slower we move, the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other, to live symbiotically over a lifetime: star-crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We. Are. Not. Swans. We’re sharks.

Ryan is a shark. He spears through the crowds of travellers with checked luggage, first class lanes reserved for him, lounges opening up with the wave of a card. He’s the dream of everyone who has ever languished in a line of shuffling coach passengers, dragging their checked luggage.

Ryan meets Alex (Vera Farmiga) in a hotel bar. She’s got a loyalty tag on a keyring, and before you can say HHonors, they are spreading out their cards, checking each other’s programs, drooling over status and airmile tallies. She’s got sixty thousand, domestic, but he’s got a lot more than that.

He’s joined the Mile High Club transatlantic. She’s done it on a regional hop.

He’s impressed, and in the blink of a camera they are searching for a closet. Next morning they examine their schedules, dates and airport codes spinning and dancing until a jackpot comes up and they can share a layover in a few weeks.

Ryan’s life in the air is interrupted by a summons to corporate headquarters in Omaha. We see him arriving at his tiny, spartan apartment, no personal possessions of any kind. It might as well be a hotel room. Next morning the road team is assembled to listen to a pitch from recently hired Cornell grad Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick). Ryan’s carefree sequence of flights and hotels and rental cars is under threat.

Ryan and Natalie are sent off for one last road trip, firing folk in a dozen cities. As an aside, every one of the terminated workers is actually a real and recently fired person. For the film, they were given the opportunity to say what they would like to have said at their exit interview. There are some very deep reactions on display.

In Miami, they encounter Alex once again, at a moment of personal trauma for Natalie. A night of carousing follows, with Ryan gradually coming to realise that his life, his career, his philosophy may not mean as much as he thought it did.

There’s more to the film, a lot more, but I’ll leave it for you. It’s good, and there’s no copout ending.

This is perhaps the perfect film for America after a year of deep downsizing. In any given audience there will be people nodding their heads, maybe crying if the wounds are recent.

Ryan’s boss: Retailers are down 20 percent. Auto industry is in the dump. Housing market doesn’t have a heartbeat. It is one of the worst times on record for America. This is our moment.

Terminated worker: On the stress level, I’ve heard that losing your job is like a death in the family. But personally I feel more like the people I worked with were my family, and I died.

Ryan is good at his job. He instructs Natalie, who confidently relies on her “minor in pyschology”, and together they rise above the pain they are inflicting.

There’s sex in this film. And yes, she uses a body double. Ryan has no commitments, no partner, nothing but casual encounters with women on the road. Even his occasional neighbour in Omaha who delivers Ryan’s mail responds to his offer to get together with the news that she is seeing someone. Ryan just shrugs. It’s not important.

Ryan’s message to imagine your life as a backpack and to empty it of belongings and then set fire to it is a fantasy for the road warrior. His message to treat relationships the same way is not one that I would expect to resonate with too many people. Like, anyone with a heart.

Possessions can weigh you down. and yes, every now and then somebody loses everything they own in a fire or some other disaster – like being laid off. But relationships are the true gold. They weigh nothing in your mythical backpack, but they are everything in your life.

Ryan and his co-workers see their jobs as sugar-coating the inevitable. They have no control over or knowledge of why a worker is terminated – they never ever say “fired” – and their own jobs are just a list of names to cross off and a stack of glossy termination packages to hand out, each one listing the material benefits, severance pay, timings and conditions of downsizing.

But the workers being let go see the thing different. Their coworkers are their friends. Their job provides for their family. How do they translate Ryan’s slick lines into words they can use with their wife and children?

This is a film about airmiles and hotel chains and rental cars and casual sex. But it’s really about relationships. What do you really want out of life? A million airmiles and a graphite loyalty card? Or someone to hold you close and share your life. All of your life.
–Guy Sez

Comments:

No Flagship Lounge at DFW. Admirals Club one of my favorites, ate out, sharing icecreams with Grl at B&J, chicken and salad at TGIF. Quick beer in the club, skipped inflight meal, very nice shiraz. Grl hung out window admiring awesome desert and mountain view, I read Diary of a Sex Fiend. Pleasant flight. Good to be home!

Related posts:

1. “Diary of a Sex Fiend” by Abby Lee
2. “Bonk” by Mary Roach
3. Love is the Answer – Barbra Streisand

Love is the Answer – Barbra Streisand

Guy Sez: OK, she’s airbrushed on the album cover. No way 67 year old Barbra Streisand looks like she’s still in her twenties.

Having made that crack, I’ll note that her voice remains the same: every note, every word, every phrase perfect. Not a lot of the geschreying of old, but the material doesn’t need force. This album is more reflective, more serious. These are not the love songs of a twenty year old, every line oozing passion and urgent need. These are the memories of a lady who has had a rich and romantic life, looking back with wistful joy.

Straight up, go for the deluxe edition with the two CDs. The songs are the same on both (though Disc 1 has a bonus track), but Disc 2 is just Barbra and a jazz quartet, instead of the overlaid orchestra on Disc 1.

It’s not just me. Barbara’s voice is the treasure here, and no matter how good the boys in the band may be, they are not the reason to buy this album. Forget the orchestral versions and stick with the quartet.

Love is the reason, love is the answer, and each one of these carefully chosen love songs will hook into your romantic heart, where Barbra’s mellow tones will coax out the loving fool in you. These are songs to share on a quiet night, just you and a lover enjoying each other’s closeness. Songs for holding hands, songs for a glass of something, songs for a fireside evening together.

Grl will tell you all that, Sister Hazel aside, I like the older stuff. And that’s mostly so. Biz Markie can make me laugh without a smile cracking his big round face, but yeah, for me it’s Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra and Simon and Garfunkel. And Barbra Streisand.

She was fantastic, crooning Memory from The Way We Were. Or taking a bath with Kris Kristofferson in A Star Is Born. I used to wear that part of the Beta smooth, rewinding it, hoping she’d stand up, covered in suds as she looked into my eyes and sang Evergreen to me.

Love is the Answer. Right. Hit the fast forward on that clunky old video and we’re into the next century, though you wouldn’t know it, looking at Babs in all her Photoshop glory, showing a little bare shoulder, a little tit, nothing but a blanket between her and a middle-aged male fantasy.

The key song is Here’s To Life:

But there’s no “yes” in yesterday
And who knows what tomorrow brings or takes away
As long as I’m still in the game, I want to play
For laughs…for life…for love.

It’s been a good, satisfying life, Barbra tells us, but she’s not ready to give up the fun. Not yet. I’ve listened to the song a dozen times and gotten more out of it each time.

In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning, despite its poignancy, is almost comic relief in comparison. It’s a song I associate with Sleepless in Seattle, a light romantic comedy, yet Barbra extracts every ounce of emotion from it. We’ve all been there: woken at two in the morning to an empty space in the big bed, and we’re alone with our thoughts. There’s a lovely Diana Krall piano solo to listen for. The two discs have slightly different lyrics, but you’ll have to listen closely to pick it.

The fourth track is the deepest. If You Go Away (Ne Me Quitte Pas) has some sorrowing lines, delivered absolutely right on target, and then Barbara drops into French. Delving into the history of this song, Ne me quitte pas was written after singer/songwriter Brel was thrown out of his mistress’s life after casting shame and sadness upon her. She was pregnant with Brel’s child and had an abortion after he refused fatherhood. Listening to the English lyrics, it’s clear that there’s a crisis on hand, Barbara seeing devastation if her lover leaves, and paradise if he stays. But just listen to the agony and promise in her voice!

Two more tracks caught my eye. The evergreen Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: as Barbra says, she’s heard it a thousand times before, but this time in singing it herself she’s found new meanings. To me it’s simple: lose love and cry. And finally, my favorite song on the album. Make Someone Happy.

Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Fame, if you win it,
Comes and goes in a minute.
Where’s the real stuff in life to cling to?
Love is the answer,
Someone to love is the answer.
Once you’ve found her,
Build your world around her.
Make someone happy.
Make just one someone happy
And you will be happy too.

I’d like to think that this is a good philosophy for life. Barbara’s fame certainly isn’t fleeting, but she’s got a lifetime of amazing talent to draw upon. And making other people happy certainly pays dividends in making yourself happy. I know that for a fact. I live for smiles. And ultimately, when it comes down to it all, one way or another, all the deep questions of human existence come down to four words: Love is the Answer.

Grl Sez Guy’s right, this isn’t the stuff of a 20 year olds romance, but it’s beginning to grow on me! Not something I would put on my ipod, but if I wanted a romantic atmosphere on a date, this is definitely something I would play. Softly, in the background, over dinner with candles and flowers. In the hopes that it would go further…

Track listing:
1. Here’s To Life
2. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning
3. Gentle Rain
4. If You Go Away (Ne Me Quitte Pas)
5. Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most
6. Make Someone Happy
7. Where Do You Start?
8. A Time For Love
9. Here’s That Rainy Day
10. Love Dance
11. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
12. Some Other Time
13. You Must Believe In Spring

Related posts:

1. “For Today” by Netherworld Dancing Toys
2. Why Sister Hazel rocks!
3. Thrill me up