During the Christmas break, I did the things one doesn’t have the chance to do during the busy school semesters.

I got reacquainted with my old bedroom; I spent time with my family; I went out with my friends; and I went to see the movies. I’d like to talk to you about one of them.

 “Up in the Air,” based on the book by Walter Kirn, is the third film by Jason Reitman who previously directed “Juno” and “Thank You For Smoking.” The leading man of leading men, George Clooney, stars as Ryan Bingham, a termination facilitator, that is, he fires people. When a corporation decides, for one reason or the other, that you’re out, they pay his company to send his smiling face over to tell you so in sympathetic words. He spends his life traveling all over the United States helping people “move on.”

For a man who spends his life hopping from plane to plane, home is not the picket fence and green lawn dream. It is, well, up in the air. Where does he live? “Here,” he says to a passenger who asks him during a flight.

Later, the film’s most iconic image appears, that which has been printed in the promotional posters: a gigantic airplane, docked, and Clooney with the small suitcase in his hand, staring up at it. The image’s composition is enough to enthrall any perceiver —the blue sky and the plane enveloping the dark silhouette of Clooney. He feels at home in the 707, by himself — he wants no picket fence. He prefers to live free of the overbearing work of having a family or a long-term relationship. He says during a lecture that human beings are like sharks — they have to keep moving to be alive. To move slowly is to die. And this is why we need a “light backpack,” free of the labor of love. We need to run through life — but for what?

At the beginning of the film, Bingham doesn’t know just how alone he is. Yet the film carries him through a journey of disillusions that will test his beliefs. Then comes the sad realization that for someone of his lifestyle, love in all its forms can only be an ephemeral taste. And in the end, we are left with him, again, staring up at the “Arrivals/Departures”

board, realizing the sadness of his existence. His only consolation is that while he is up in the air, below him people are hugging each other and the idea that sad men and women can find consolation in the embrace of their children, their friends, or their lovers.

I thought about my friends from back home, my family, and Loyola, where I have had the honor to meet many good people. And I was grateful, because realizing that you are loved is just as beautiful a feeling as loving. But that afternoon in the movie theater, what I most wanted to do was to reach out across the screen and put my hand on Ryan’s shoulder.

Rolando Lopez can be reached at [email protected]