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A Tale of Two Protagonists
Posted July 28, 2010 in Blog, Reviews
Thoreau once said that you don’t own your possessions. Your possessions own you. No modern character better exemplifies this philosophy than Ryan Bingham, the fashionably detached resident of “airworld” from Walter Kirn’s novel, Up In The Air.
If the title sounds familiar, you can thank Jason Reitman for adapting the book and casting George Clooney in an Oscar nominated turn as the executive-status obsessed main character. I highly recommend the movie to anyone looking for a grownup antidote to an endless summer of poorly executed IMAX 3D conversions.
The smart, enjoyable film becomes fascinating when compared to the original book. The obvious changes are there. Reitman dropped several major plotlines and added characters to give Ryan Bingham both a reason to explain “airworld” to the audience and someone to challenge his observations.
Devoid of most of these characters, the book deeply entrenches the reader in Ryan’s progressively flawed perspective, and that’s where things get interesting. George Clooney is the natural embodiment of what the book’s main character imagines himself to be. You can feel the similarity slowly fall away as it becomes increasingly clear that the book’s Ryan Bingham is an unreliable narrator.
In the film, Ryan eventually comes to question the end result of his beliefs. The book goes for much darker territory. Hiding behind Ryan’s detached vision of “airworld” is paranoia, substance abuse, delusions of grandeur, disillusionment, and desperation. How did such a major tonal shift happen? Listen to the director talk about what drew him to the book:
The film version of Ryan then becomes a vehicle for Reitman to explore his own attachment to “airworld.” The end result is a satisfying personal detour that broadens the main character’s story arc for the masses, streamlines the plot, and puts the book in a difficult position. Amazon reviews (since the movie’s release) have been negative, ranging from disappointed to outright anger. The reality of Ryan Bingham can’t compete with his idealized counterpart.
It doesn’t help Kirn that readers, brought to the book by the movie, will find very little material in common. Even the most central device, Ryan’s backpack speech (heard in the teaser trailer below) is a new additions created by Reitman.
One of my favorite classes in college studied the process of adapting print to film. Reading Up In The Air, I couldn’t help but wonder where readers would lose their ability to identify with the increasingly flawed main character and intentionally winding narrative. The two works almost serve as doppelgangers for each other. I’m an accidental tourist to both worlds, happy with the idealized and floundering versions of Ryan Bingham. Readers that need to identify with a book’s main character should think twice before purchasing a ticket.
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