I feel so ambivalent about the way Hollywood packages progressive messages -- messages I agree with, in substance. But the way they do it, it's a symptom of a basic problem.
The obvious cases are movies about the war in Iraq, from In the Valley of Elah to The Hurt Locker. Opposition to the war saturates the atmosphere of these films, but it's not explicit. The focus is on the personal price that's paid -- as if the war were a condition of nature, like earthquakes. The reason for this is obvious. Makers of those movies don't want to violate the number one lesson learned from the Vietnam war: support the troops this time around, no matter how stupid the war itself may be.
But other cases are subtler. Take Up in the Air, for example. Don't get me wrong; it's a really good movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. But, well -- take the firing scenes. They are wonderfully effective and they don't chicken out. We are forced to witness the human damage being done these days to non-union workers in OfficeWorld who are distinguished from the proletariat of yore only by white collars -- meaningless tokens in an information economy where acres of cubicles have replaced factories. There is an atmosphere of opposition to corporate exploitation but, as with the Iraq war movies, it never gets explicit.
We don't see or hear anything structural, nothing about the system. "Bosses" are dissed but it's for not facing the workers they are firing, workers they've been welcoming into their corporate "family" at annual retreats for years. But these are personal failings -- no guts. So the cowardly bosses hire Jason Bateman's outfit and George Clooney flies around the country doing their dirty work for them. Day in and day out, week after week, month after month.
A very ugly way to make a living. But it's George Clooney, for god's sake. You can't hate him. You just can't. He's so self-deprecating, so self-aware -- so charming. Having made that choice, what's a movie to do? Well, weirdly, we are eventually expected to feel sorry for George and his rookie partner and, at the same time, somehow admire them for bearing up under the strain of their jobs! It's as if their ability to override their own humanity makes us wish for their redemption, while at the same time we get to admire their slick professionalism. Sort of the way we admire con men in a caper movie.
They get their come-uppance in the end, but once again it's personal -- they get hurt by their lovers, with whom they were vulnerable in spite of their career armor. Strictly personal. Unless you count the suicide of the lady the rookie partner fired? But even that -- it goes by so fast -- the movie makes it seem like it's really all about the rookie partner, who quits her job as a result. So now we know she's basically OK. And Clooney writes her a great letter of recommendation, so we know he's basically OK. Plus he goes back to his job having prevailed over those who want the gun-for-hire firings to take place on Skype. He goes back up in the air so he can drop down on his prey in person once again.
That's how it ends.
Uh, OK... meaning what, exactly?
Is irresolution at the end of a movie like this a mature acknowledgment of the grey zones in real life? Or is it a necessity forced upon movie makers by their need to have it both ways?