Anora (2024)

The most R-rated movie for the year...probably.  Okay, it seems like the connective tissue between this year's Academy Awards is having a strong sexual content with nudity.  Honestly, the first third of this movie felt exploitative.  Again, this is another one of those movies that seems to be talking about the tragedy of sexual exploitation while simultaneously exploiting the actresses in those roles.  The rest of the movie has a ton of drug, alcohol, and tobacco use coupled with violence and assault.  Language is throughout the film, so much so that I would have a hard time finding a clip without language.  Well deserved R rating.

DIRECTOR:  Sean Baker

Do you know how happy I would be if I could knock out a top-tier Anora blog right now?  I'm so swamped with all of the things going on in my life that I should shove this ten-or-eleven year blog into the trash and just move on with my life.  But here's the thing!  And it's a kicker!  I actually was quite moved by Anora!  I was!  That's not insane in itself.  It's just that I went from thinking that I hated this movie to now putting it in a prestigious category of "Academy Award Best Picture nominees that I actually liked!"  Honestly, this has been a meh year for Oscars, and this is coming from a guy who tends to like everything.  So when I say that I really dug this movie, that's insane.

The even more insane thing is that the first third of this movie almost made me turn it off.  Okay, I wasn't going to turn it off.  My wife and I were going to power through.  Some of you are dubious of this.  At this point, the Oscar nominees have gotten so sexual that it seems like you can't get nominated without showing just an abundance of sex and nudity.  I get why Sean Baker put some of the sexuality in the movie.  Fundamentally, Ali's character is often defined by her profession.  I'm stealing some of my wife's take on this and adding onto it, so all credit goes her way.  Ali is one of those protagonists that's not quite an avatar.  After all, Ali's life and her profession is so specific that it appeals to most people viewing Anora as something "other."  In other words, most of us are watching Anora with horrific fascination.  "This is what this world is like?"  I mean, we have to take the movie's word for it.  Shy of being a stripper who occasionally dabbles in sex work, it's meant to be a weird world.

But my wife pointed out that Ani's dreams are almost non-existent in this movie.  Most of the time we get someone who gets a traditionally degrading job (which Ani never implies is that degrading), there tends to be a narrative that they are reaching for something great out there.  That whole tale of "working your way through med school" is not even remotely present for Ani.  Ani actually seems to enjoy her job, with the exception of the bureaucratic nonsense that her boss puts her through coupled with an annoying co-worker in the form of Diamond.  That's oddly mundane for work.  It's a universal template over something that is overtly situational. 

But when she marries Vanya, she holds onto Vanya tightly.  Her character is initially defined by her own apathy.  She doesn't even want to meet Vanya when Jimmy demands that she speaks Russian with him.  One of the things that Baker does better than anyone else is letting us know a character's silent intentions.  This could easily be a movie about Ani trying to hold onto a fortune that would take her out of her life.  No one could really blame her for grasping onto that life that Vanya has offered her.  But with money, Ani doesn't seem extravagant.  If anything, she settles into marriage quite traditionally.  She wants to stay home and hang out with her husband.  She never lies to herself about why Vanya likes her.  She understands her power over men with her sexuality, but their relationship, in her mind, has evolved past that.

When she fights for her marriage, she isn't fighting for cash.  She's fighting for the man that she's learned to love.  Listen, Vanya sucks from moment one.  He's kind of the worst.  But one of the things that the last moments of the movie show is that Ani is more broken than she lets on.  The fact that Vanya is willing to pay for exclusivity with Ani and spend any dollar amount to make that happen is the closest thing she probably has to being seen as more than a stripper.  The bridge that helped me understand Ani's perspective is that Vanya could absolutely afford any variety of woman that he wanted in America.  Instead, he kept on hanging out with her.  And as sexual as their relationship was, there were moments where they just hung out.  That was probably new for her.  It was someone who stuck around and let her watch him play video games.  (Note:  Yet another movie where that dude absolutely is not playing video games.  It does not look like that.) 

When Toros and his guys come in to separate the two, it's heartbreaking when Vanya runs off.  There was this crisis moment for me when I was wondering what kind of kid Vanya was.  At one point, this movie could have been about how Vanya was stupid enough to fight the Russian mob (or in this case, the oligarchy?) or if he was a selfish jerk.  And the movie was about how Vanya was a selfish jerk.  Listen, they're all children playing adults.  One of the repeated things that Ani kept screaming at Vanya was that he was an adult and that he didn't have to listen to his parents.  I mean, it's an on-the-nose moment, but I don't even care.  It makes for great citation.  But the story becomes a glorious mess of a love story after that.  Going back to my wife's point, Ani only gains her goal after she loses something that she was never looking for.  It's an odd tale.  

But the fact that the movie shifts over to Igor as an outside perspective looking in, Igor --for all of his dark nonsense --is closer to a traditional avatar.  Igor, as a hired thug, has no personal emotional loyalty to Toros or Vanya's parents.  Yes, Igor sucks.  One of the things I disagreed with my wife over was how much Igor sucks. She's in the camp of "He's cute."  I'm in the camp that Ani says at the end.  He assaulted her (even though he didn't think that he did).  I mean, Igor's got too many red flags to really make him a compelling romantic lead.  But what Igor does have that everyone else, besides Ani, lacks is a conscience.  He has a moral code that is not completely defined by loyalty.  Vanya thinks that he is put upon, but buckles immediately under pressure.  Vanya's parents --and this isn't even analysis at this point --are monsters who only care about social status and wealth.  Toros and Garnik will move heaven and earth for respect amongst the oligarchs.  But Igor?  Igor seems naive enough to see both the perspective of Ani and the line in the sand that he will not cross.

Yeah, his innocence is appealing, but only in contrast to the monsters he's surrounded by.  While Baker creates a narrative that has Ani and Igor overcoming a toxic meet cute, the rest of the movie stresses that Ani's escape is not through a romantic encounter with Igor.  Yes, it is touching that he holds her as she weeps at the end, but she also has just used sex as a thank you to conclude the film. Those tears come from the seeing of herself for a brief moment and not knowing how to just be Anora again.  In my head, Anora is the person who has needs and feelings.  Ani is the sex worker who closes herself off from being hurt for the sake of economic success.  When she "thanks" Igor, it's because she doesn't know how to talk to someone like that to express gratitude.  Yes, Igor is right to simply hold her at the end there.  But there has been this line crossed and it's a lot to unpack.

I have never gone so far from disliking a movie to loving a movie by the end.  It's an emotional and oddly funny movie.  Listen, when the Russians show up and the two are married, that's when the movie really cooks.  I get what is going on in that first part.  I would have pulled back a little, but the movie is a better version of the comedy thrillers that we saw in cinema's yesteryear.  It's really an oddly charming and deep movie.  But what can you expect from The Florida Project guy?