Last Friday night, my wife and I found the one theater in Chicago showing Up in the Air (it’s in very limited release until Christmas).  Ever since the preview trailers hit the Web, people have been asking me — “Is this what your life is like?”

Watching the opening sequence — a montage of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) going through his well-practiced drill of packing, checking in, and getting through security — was shockingly realistic.  It was like watching a replay of my Monday mornings, but with a much more attractive version of me.  As the movie continued, I started to pick up some niggling continuity problems — international business class seats on an MD-80, an underground tram in O’Hare.  But, except for the lack of any flight delays, the film does a good job of capturing the highs and lows of frequent business travelers.

Bingham’s lifestyle — 322 days on the road, leaving him “43 miserable days at home” in Omaha — is a common one for young road warriors.  Bingham’s empty apartment in Omaha looks almost exactly like my first apartment in Dallas, except that Bingham’s has more than one piece of furniture in the living room, and his mattress and box spring are in a bed frame rather than on the floor.

Most young frequent travelers enjoy this freedom for 3-5 years — flying to, say, Amsterdam for the weekend instead of their empty apartment — but eventually settle into relationships and a more settled way of life.  I do know a number of guys, though, (and they are all men) who never make that transition.  They continue to live their lives in the air, using business dinners and client meetings as substitutes for more meaningful relationships.  Their biggest fear is Bingham’s — that one day the music will stop, the travel will end, and that they’ll be in stuck in an empty apartment with no way out.

In one of Bingham’s motivational talks, he says “Relationships are the heaviest components of your life”, counseling his audience to avoid them because they slow you down. You can’t live a life in the air when you’re weighed down by relationships.  But millions of frequent flier miles later, Bingham is dragging himself through airports with a little less snap, weighed down by disappointment and loneliness.  The melancholy air that pervades the movie is real.  It’s the same sense of melancholy that rules airports late on a Friday night when the real-world Binghams walking off their planes, looking forward to nothing more than their Monday morning flights out.