Jan 2

Jan 2 Movie Review : Anora (2024)

Money has been an important character in American fiction for much longer than I’ve been alive (I’m 42 years old). It's been known to cure all the ills of men (at least temporarily) and as an escalator to paradise on Earth. A lot of bad fiction has been written about the power of money, but little has been created about what it couldn't do. I was not familiar with Sean Baker's game prior to watching Anora, but he did write one of the best thing I've seen about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Anora tells the story of Ani (Mikey Madison), an American stripper of Russian origins working at an upscale club in New York. When she's assigned to a Russian client (Mark Eydelshteyn) solely based on the fact that she speaks his language, Ani discovers he is the son of an oligarch with a lot of money, time and juvenile lust of life to spare. He offers her to become his private girlfriend for a week, offers her the time of her life and, of course, they get married in Las Vegas. It’s all a fucking fairy tale until his parents find out.

Vanya and the Pursuit of the American Dream

This is a very long movie (139 min.) and it only makes sense from A to Z is you consider Vanya for what he’s supposed to represent: a walking golden goose, the incarnation of overstepping your own social class. Because Vanya disappears about 40 minutes into Anora and not only Ani falls into some kind of netherworld where she has no purpose but to look for him, but everyone else to depends on him for a living. Notably here, a sympathetic, old school family of Armenian enforcers who hate babysitting a rich kid.

There's a lot of traveling in cars and yelling for a good hour in Anora, but it becomes more than just that if you're understanding it through the prism of what Sean Baker is trying to say: here are four stressed out people who hate their lives, who act against their natures and who are forced together in order to secure a comfortable (and even enviable) future that might not even exist. Their quest is heartbreakingly hollow. The inherent promise of the American Dream is a lie. It’s not a mountain to climb, it's a merry-go-round.

Of course it’s funny at times because these people are out of their fucking mind and it's always funnier to see a donkey chase a carrot when you are not the aforementioned donkey, but it's also fucking sad. Even for Vanya who has so much money that the only thing he knows how to do is to spend it. He doesn’t have any dreams or hopes, he's just completely consumed by the endless opulence he lives in. There's a strong subculture of ridiculizing the rich in cinema and television, but Anora doesn’t do that.

It looks at endless wealth for what it is. Another merry-go-round.

Igor : The Smart Counterpoint

Anora would be just another semi-boring oh-look-how-the-rich-suck if it wasn’t for Igor (Yura Borisov) who really doesn’t have anything to offer Ani, except for the fact that he gives a shit. About her and about the silliness of their predicament. He functions on a simplistic good boy/bad boy dynamic with Vanya, but it gradually becomes more striking because he is there and he looks out for Ani as Vanya is somewhere else getting loaded into oblivion. It’s simple, but it's romantic as shit even if Ani hates his guts.

It's never really clear whether Igor is a dangerous mobster or just a kid who's been suckered into this mess, but he's physically unable to see Ani as a means to an end. To him, she's a person who has been used and he sees himself in her. It all culminates in a final scene that’s somehow both brutal and ambiguous at the same time. That’s one thing Sean Baker does that I really like: he will let something linger for way longer than conventions dictate and make things happen that you won’t see anywhere else.

I really liked Anora. It's a smart movie. It’s a little too slapstick and metaphorical at times to be a great movie, but it’s something I wouldn’t be against rewatching if the context lends itself. It does have a profound understanding of human nature and humans longing for what-they-do-not-have. Anora employs so many good, previously unknown actors too. I don’t know if I would’ve award it the Palme D’Or (although festivals usually reward films like these), but it was a pleasant change of pace from conventional cinema.