When I was in college and hoarded pretensions like precious gemstones, I was convinced that the sadder a film was the more important it was for me to see it. I would drag my unsuspecting chums to unrelentingly dour character dramas, shot on the cheap in the shadow of Brutalist project housing. But while I certainly became better acquainted with certain perspectives on poverty and drug use, I soon discovered that wallowing in misery isn't a shortcut to understanding human drama, and that emotional intensity isn't shorthand for emotional intelligence. I don't think watching those films made me a worse person, but I'm not sure it made me a better person, either. And I'm fairly certain my mood improved when I stopped watching someone walk into the sea and drown every weekend.
I bring all this up because Aloft is one of those films. It's not a bad exercise in abject human misery, but it is, at the end of the day, an exercise in abject human misery.
