Anne at 13,000 Ft. (2021)

The Agony and the Empathy

Can we please close the book on cinema’s “Damaged Asshole” subgenre? It probably didn’t start with Leaving Las Vegas, but that’s my personal flashpoint for movies about irredeemable jerks whose highly romanticized and rarely contextualized journeys into self-destruction are meant to elicit sympathy (or, worse yet, that gag-worthy buzzword “empathy”) for tragic losers who refuse to help themselves—or accept help from the fading remnants of once-vital support systems.

Awards shows love tortured nihilists, heaping praise and statues on the likes of The Wrestler and Manchester By the Sea. But in Hollywood’s ever-deranged quest for absolute equality, we’ve been presented with a handful of films in recent years that revel in women exhibiting the worst traits of men. Obvious Child, Saint Frances, All About Nina, Brittany Runs A Marathon, and more than a few others all feature main characters who demand/dare/expect audiences to accept them as they are—even if their behavior is patently unacceptable.

The latest in this cavalcade of narcissistic misery is Anne at 13,000 Ft., a 75-minute drama that lasts approximately 6 hours. Anne (Deragh Campbell) is a young Canadian daycare worker whose life is a mess. She gets into passive/aggressive arguments with a senior staff member who advises her to keep an eye on the children; she complains about her relationships while scrolling through text messages—during a group project; she gives a wedding toast in which she confesses to having neglected a child who subsequently passed out from heat exhaustion.

No, these aren’t bits from the first half of a 2010’s-era Amy Schumer comedy. Nor are they setups for a traditional narrative in which Anne comes to the realization that she needs help. These scenes from Anne’s life (as well as half a dozen others, all equally horrifying) are simply meant to be, to paint a portrait of a troubled Gen-Z woman who can’t, like, cope with a screwed-up world, ya know?

Like the rubbernecking first episodes of any given American Idol season, un-self-aware Anne is allowed to present the flakiest, nastiest, most fire-able-offense behavior because no one in her immediate sphere has the guts to give her a solid, “What the Hell is wrong with you?!” The aforementioned senior staff member comes the closest, but even she is cowed by an administration that prefers conflict-averse niceties to appropriate and direct discipline.

Worse yet, we’re meant to believe that this behavior is attractive to some people. Following the abysmal wedding toast, Anne is approached by Matt (Matt Johnson), a self-professed EverQuest addict and alcoholic. He ignores a Memorial Day service-worth of red flags, including being invited over to Anne’s family’s house for dinner, unannounced, just so Anne can watch the look of embarrassment on his face (she announces this out loud). The desperate simp is a well-established “Damaged Asshole” archetype, but being confronted with further innovations in masculine degradation is always an unpleasant surprise.

The film’s stubborn devotion to subjectivity isn’t limited to the lack of context, history, or even an assessment of Anne’s mental state (Is she suffering from an undiagnosed illness, or is she simply an unrepentant vortex of selfishness?). Co-writer/director Kazik Radwanski’s* claustrophobic camera fixates on tight close-ups of faces and limited backgrounds from start to finish, resulting in a faulty-zoom effect that may have you checking to see if something’s wrong with your screen. I found the skydiving scenes (from which the film derives its title) rather thrilling, but only because of my innate fear of heights; cinematographer Nikolay Michaylov’s faithfully serves a director’s vision that literally has blinders on.

“Okay, Mr. Complainy-Pants, is there anything you do like about this movie?”

Sure.

The performances all around are superb and helped fuel my annoyance with the material. Campbell and her fellow actors are so convincing as a venomous spider and the scared bugs cocooned in her web that I often had to remind myself that I wasn’t watching a documentary.

Radwanski commits to his subjectivity, as I mentioned, to the detriment of everything else; it’s the sensation of having dropped in on an extended support group horror story about a friend-of-a-friend-friend who never got the help she so desperately needed. There is, or should be, a significant degree of emotional distance (say, 13,000 feet?) between listener and teller in that scenario—an automatic “Glad I’m not caught up in that nonsense” response; Radwanski invites us into the madness and locks the door behind. If that’s your idea of entertainment, you’ll find plenty of misery to bask in.

Adults with a healthy amount of perspective, on the other hand, may find the movie to be a kind of endurance test. How long can they last before turning off the movie or leaving the theatre? I made it from start to finish but found my finger regularly hovering over that “X” button.

And before you accuse me of being a prude or an extreme moralist, allow me to recommend three films (actually, four) that run circles around this one. For the ultimate in wanton self-destruction, check out Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant from 1992. Harvey Keitel’s crooked, drug-addicted New York cop spends the entire movie burning down the world around him. At no point, however, is the audience meant to sympathize with him or think his actions “badass”. Despite the main character’s criminal depravity, we can see a broken spirit yearning to break free—a self-awareness grasping for an olive branch from a world that offers up only dead kids and murdered nuns.

Its semi-sequel, Port of Call: New Orleans, came out 17 years later. It’s sort of more of the same, but is directed by Werner Herzog and stars Nicolas Cage as a big-time bonkers Big Easy cop. In other words, it’s not as big a downer.

Returning to female-driven movies of this kind, I can’t recommend Young Adult highly enough. Charlize Theron’s turn as a developmentally arrested children’s book author who must reconcile a life of irresponsibility with the peers who’ve moved on around her is the standard against which Anne at 13,000 Ft. can only be judged harshly.

Lastly, there’s Colossal, a film in which Anne Hathaway discovers that her subconscious rage manifests as a jerk-stomping kaiju whenever she blacks out from drinking too much (there’s a lot of smashing in that movie). While it takes a bit of a cheap turn in the climax, Hathaway (like Theron), shines as a self-immolating lunatic whose pathos is at least witty and whose supporting characters aren’t simply punching bags.

I’ve seen a lot of reviews for the highly-rated Anne at 13,000 Ft. that praise Radwanski and Campbell’s empathetic and judgment-free portrait of troubled young women. I say it’s time we started applying a little more judgment when it comes to what we’re asked to accept as passable behavior (and as entertainment).

Sounds harsh, sure, but if you found out that some hungover, constantly texting twentysomething had neglected your kid to the point of their slipping into unconsciousness, would your reaction be one of head-patting, “there-there” empathy, or a fire-and-brimstone insistence that heads roll—from offender to hiring manager to administrator?

There’s only one answer to that hypothetical, by the way.

Incorrect guessers will be first out of the plane (and their parachutes have been packed by people like Anne).

*He and Campbell wrote the film together.