Anora – Michael’s Moments
The only other movie that I have seen of Sean Baker’s, before Anora, is Florida Project, which I gave one of the lowest ratings ever. I did not like that film at all, finding that I couldn’t relate to any of the characters, especially the lead child, and that, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what Baker was trying to get us to feel. Meanwhile, the professional critics raved about the film and characterized it as a ‘slice-of-life’ portrayal. (Joan, at the time, called it the worst movie she had ever seen and hated the characters.)
Perhaps Baker, on his eighth feature film, has matured his style, or maybe I have become a little more understanding, but I am coming around to like Anora. (And maybe that means I should look at Florida Project with a fresh perspective). Baker, though, is asking his viewers to make a profound shift, one that is intrinsically difficult. Instead of identifying with the characters and their situation, he is suggesting that understanding and empathy come from abstracting up several layers. I can’t possibly understand Ani’s job as a sex worker, nor her Russian background. But I have experienced the frustrations of feeling betrayed; of wanting something so badly that I fail to see things, plainly evident, that will make achieving that success so painful; of putting up a good fight, but not winning. So while I can’t imagine ever being in Ani’s real-world situation (at least, not being a sex worker), I can sense some of what she is feeling. And that I think is Baker’s gift with Anora.
Joan still doesn’t like this movie, and I suspect a lot of people, maybe most people, won’t either. It is a tough one. There is a lot of explicit sex, and, despite the fact that sex is one of the key things that makes adult life livable, it isn’t available to many people as something they want to witness in a movie. And the F-word occurs some 479 times, or more than 3 times per minute. (Note: I did not spend my time counting them; someone else did that!). So if you are opposed to foul language, this is not your film either.
Still though, despite all that, or maybe because of that, you should give this movie a chance. The tonal shifts from shock to macabre humor, to dark despair, are done well. And the ending is uncertain and open to many interpretations. So, take a ride on the wild side for a couple of hours and delve deeply into Ani’s world, how different it is and yet how much it is the same.
Anora – Story and Tone:
Anora was written and directed by Sean Baker. And he wrote the script particularly for Mikey Madison in the title role. Madison comes from an Ashkenazi Jewish background but was born in Los Angeles, while Baker is a New Yorker through and through. Perhaps the intersection of those two backgrounds finds its locus in the setting for Anora, Brighton Beach, a Russian/Jewish enclave in Brooklyn, New York. Almost like another character, the setting plays a key role in Baker’s story. Equally important to where she lives is where she works, as a sex worker in a Manhattan strip club. She is working at one of the few well-paying jobs available to her as she struggles to survive in the pre-COVID world of 2019.
So, it probably isn’t too surprising that, when confronted by the possibilities of a rapid move upwards on the social status charts, she finds the attentions from a spoiled son of a Russian oligarch irresistible. While she seduces him with her sexual prowess, he seduces her with his status and financial power. Work becomes inextricably entwined with personal life.
It is during the first 45 minutes of Anora that Baker lays out these baseline characteristics of his story and the tone he sets, by showing nearly pornographic sex and the pulsating and, for most people, alien world of the sex worker in a strip club. Your initial feelings oscillate between prurient curiosity and something of admiration for Ani’s spunk and grit. Then, in the second act, things get a little tough – Ani’s spunk and grit are tested. The scenes unfold in a real-time setting where the camera never really stops, and the action starts to seem funny, in a situation that is decidedly not – the tone shifts. Then, things start to change into ugly as the damage done in the first hour and a half starts to get resolved. The tension grows as does the uncertainty.
And there is the ending. Baker did not intend for a clear ending and said that he wanted it to be up to interpretation for the audience. While that is normally something I dislike in a movie, here it seems to be a bit more appropriate. The only thing he leaves us with is an ending where our tentative and uncomfortable feelings towards Ani now seem to resolve in a new, and very different understanding.
Related Movies: Florida Project (Sean Baker)
Anora – Storytellers
Anora/Ani (Mikey Madison) – Anora is the central figure of this movie, and Madison won the Leading Actress Oscar for her totally engaging and raw-naked performance. I can’t help but compare Madison’s acting here to last year’s winning performance by Emma Stone in Poor Things. Both roles were very difficult and required an openness to nudity and sex that you expect to be very challenging. Reportedly, Madison eschewed an intimacy coordinator and engaged in the sex scenes with Ivan with full confidence – she owned him as well as the scenes. It is summed up well when, in the strip club, she is writhing in Ivan’s lap and has the wherewithal to blow a huge gum bubble. She pours it on in a totally different way during the pivotal home invasion scene in the second act, and then again in the final scene. Each time, she shows an increasing awareness of just exactly what has happened to her.
Baker wrote the role of Ani for Madison after seeing her, as one of the Manson girls, in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. For her Ani role, Madison not only learned Russian and pole dancing, but she did most of her own stunts during the fight scenes. We will be seeing more of Mikey Madison.
Igor (Yura Borisov) – Igor is a Russian transplant who is dragged into an increasingly complex situation where he gets assigned the responsibility of watching over and controlling Ani as she becomes more distressed at the difficulties of her situation. Igor does grow over the weekend, and he plays a critical role in the final scene. But while we might have some sympathy for his situation, he never becomes a character we can identify with. While Borisov did a fine job with his character as written, I’m not sure there was enough meat there to justify an Oscar nomination.
Ivan/Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) – Ivan is the spoiled son of the extremely rich Russian oligarch Zakharov family. His role in the first 45 minutes of the film is critical as he falls in love/lust with Ani, and he increasingly commands more of her time and attention. The performance by the young Russian actor brilliantly captures the lustful ways of a 21-year-old male who has absolutely no incentive to be responsible. His supporting role was equally deserving of an Oscar nomination.
Related Movies: Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood; Better Things (TV) (Madison)
Anora – Cinematic Arts
Sean Baker did his own editing for Anora and won the Oscar for that. He has a great sense of timing and cuts his scenes to maintain mood. His decision to film the home invasion in a real-time sequence adds an intensity that accentuates the comic aspects. I did think that the extended scenes where they are tracking down Ivan were overdone. Perhaps they added some comic effect, but I didn’t get it and got a little bored in that part of the movie. Much of those scenes were also done in real time and with hidden cameras.
In an interesting camera choice, Baker and his cinematographer chose to film largely in a palette of red and blue, clearly using filters in some instances. Some critics have suggested a relationship to current political divides in the U.S. But aside from the obvious two colors, I didn’t see anything except a strong delineation along class lines with no real sense of color alignment. The first 40 minutes or so, capturing the world of a strip club and sex work, involves several explicit sex scenes and the cinematographer (Drew Daniels) got about as up close and personal as you could get without turning it into outright pornography.
Related Movies: Florida Project (Sean Baker)
Anora – World Building
Ani is a stripper and exotic dancer, so she spends most of her time naked or nearly so – costumes aren’t exactly an overwhelming aspect of this movie. And the fact that it was set just six years ago, and fashion, especially among the working-class people that populate this movie, wasn’t too much different from current tastes. Still, they did some creative things -like the tinsel in her hair (apparently done on a whim) – which reflects the strip club lighting.
On the other side of the class conflict in this film is the portrayal of the very rich world of Russian oligarchs. Obviously, I have little knowledge of that world, but the fancy coats and boots, private jets, the decorative touches, and endless supply of drugs and liquor suggest the image well. And, of course, there is Ivan’s mansion – which happens to be a real house, not in Brighton Beach, but in the nearby Brooklyn neighborhood of Mill Basin. As the site that sets the stage for the interclass marriage as well as the home invasion setting that changes it forever, it is a wonderful choice of location shooting.
In Florida Project, like Anora, Sean Baker likes to explore the lives of those on the edges of society. In his earlier film, it was a family headed by a single mom living in a poor neighborhood in the shadows of an amusement park (Disney World??). In Anora, it is the underworld of not-so-hidden sex, money, and, again, class conflict, which he sets in the world of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Also known as Little Odessa, the neighborhood, of 36,000 people, became a center of Russian immigrants in several waves following the Great Depression, the Holocaust, the mid-70s, and again after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Coney Island, and the famous amusement park, features prominently.
Related Movies: (None that I have reviewed)
Anora – Sound & Music
If you aren’t into the throbbing sound of club and dance music, much of the soundtrack might overwhelm you. The strip club atmosphere pulsates with very loud, pounding, often electronic music that is intended to distract and seduce the patron into parting with their money. Anora does a great job, especially in the first twenty minutes, of capturing the intense sonic sensations that saturate this world. Composer Joseph Capalbo, someone I am totally unfamiliar with, wrote the score for the film and works in the electronic and dance club genres. Sound effects during the home invasion scene are appropriately crunchy.
Related Movies: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On; One Night in Miami (Sound)
Anora – What Others Think
Oscar Buzz – After Emilia Perez fell from Oscar grace, it seems that Anora rose to become the darling of the Oscars. The movie received six nominations, five of them what I call “Major,” and it won five Oscars, giving it a seriously high evaluation as a great storytelling work. The wins for Mikey Madison and Sean Baker are especially significant because they are their first nominations, and you usually don’t win on your first attempt.
For reference here are the nominations for Anora:
Best Picture WINNER
Director (Sean Baker) WINNER
Original Screenplay (Sean Baker) WINNER
Leading Actress (Mikey Madison) WINNER
Supporting Actor (Yura Borisov)
Film Editing (Sean Baker) WINNER
Audience Sentiment – What can we say? The viewing public didn’t appreciate Anora as much as either the Academy or the professional critics. While the overall rating places it at the top of the middle third of general-interest movies, some of the viewer comments are scathing: “Waste of time”; “Did I miss something?”; “Did not understand the hype”; “5 Oscars for this???”. Even my wife called it “Awful! The Academy has lost its mind.”
Critical Reviews – It isn’t uncommon for the critics and the Academy to agree on movie ratings. And, in this case, the overall critical assessment puts Anora at the absolute top of the general-interest movies, agreeing with the Academy. Tomris Laffly (RogerEbert) wrote “Both thrilling and heartbreaking, both boisterous and shatteringly sad.” James Berardinelli (ReelViews) called it “one of the freshest and most audacious films available” and noted Madison’s performance as “fearless and showing an admirable capacity for physical comedy…her most remarkable moment comes during the final scene.” Jessica Kiang (Sight&Sound) lauded Baker, “By turns swoony, funny, panicky, and sad, this is the director’s most vivid creation yet.” And Alissa Wilkinson (New York Times) gave the film a Critic Pick calling Madison’s performance “career-making” and towards the end of her review “It’s about the limits of the American dream, the many invisible walls that stand in the way of fantasies about equality and opportunity and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. This is a story of wealth, power, and what love can and can’t overcome.”
Combined Rating – Despite some really negative audience opinion, the overall difference between critics and the public isn’t huge. And Anora ends up in the top third of all of this year’s nominated movies (including the special-interest films which usually rate higher). So, assuming you aren’t offended by fairly explicit sex, you should see this movie.
Where to Watch: Stream: Hulu; Rent: Apple/Prime/Fandango/Google/Youtube ($6)
