Up In The Air

The story is about a corporate downsizer and his travels. The film follows his isolated life and philosophies along with the people that he meets along the way.

Ryan Bingham is a man who makes his living travelling to workplaces around the United States and conducting employee layoffs for bosses who are too cowardly to do it themselves. Ryan also delivers motivational speeches, using the analogy “What’s in Your Backpack?” to extol the virtues of a life free of relationships with people and things.

Once on his way travelling, he comes across a charming woman, Alex, who is also a frequent flyer. They are attracted by each other, and begin a casual relationship.

In his office in Omaha, Nebraska, an ambitious younger coworker named Natalie is planning to cut costs by having employees stay grounded and conduct layoffs over the Internet, which means Ryan cannot travel so much as he used to. However, Natalie is assigned to go with Ryan for an upcoming travel. During that time, they become better acquainted. Soon afterwards they are both called back to Omaha to start using Natalie’s remote-layoff program instead of firing people face-to-face.

Ryan is invited to his sister’s wedding in Northern Wisconsin, and he takes Alex with him there. Ryan also helps the new couple, Jim and Julie, to take some photos where he travels to, because they cannot afford a honeymoon. Jim has cold feet just when the wedding is going to begin, but finally Ryan manages to persuade him to go through with the wedding. For himself, Ryan enjoys attending the wedding together with Alex. But afterward Ryan finds that he is once again alone as Alex departs back to her own life.

Later at his “What’s in Your Backpack?” speech, Ryan suddenly quits and flies to Alex’s home in Chicago. To break his heart, he finds Alex to be a married woman with little children, and he is told that he is simply an escape. On the flight home, he is announced to have just crossed his ten million miles mark, which is once his eagerest personal goal.

Natalie quits after one of the fired employees commits suicide. Nevertheless she deserves to earn a good job for her excellence in working. Ryan is sent back onto the road, putting the remote-layoff program on indefinite hold. He enters the airport, stares at the schedule of departures, and finds himself still here, and still alone.