What a bleak film this is. I had previously pre-awarded it Best romantic comedy, thinking that if it were the movie people said it was, it was surely the best in that category this year.
But this is not a romantic comedy. This is a soul-killing tale of the impossibility of love in the world of 2009.
There are some really good things in this movie. I really really enjoyed the sequence at the beginning that documents the actual experience that Clooney's character has, in going through airport security (on the eve of the underwear bomber that will now supposedly add full naked body scans). It is important that this be artistically shown while it is still going on, so people in the future know just how screwed up we became.
You shouldn't be surprised that I read the bleakness of this movie as reflective of the denial that we live under, as a society about 9/11, and what really happened. The hero here (Clooney) literally declares the airplanes to be his home.
Without the truth about what happened that day, we are no longer America. We no longer have the spirit to live and love as we once did. Because we are living a great big lie, a malignant one that must be exposed.
Until then it's all just so bleak. It's so bleak that it makes 23 year old girls break down and sob about it.
Here in fact is the glory of the movie, not in Clooney's performance, but in Anna Kendrick as Natalie.
I can't tell if Kendrick is going to be a great actress, but here she has the role of a lifetime, in a supporting capacity, and really makes the movie.
Best
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