Why I love Anora

"Long live independent film!"

Hi friends,

The Oscars were last Sunday and Anora writer/director/editor/producer Sean Baker took home four trophies, writing/directing/editing/producing himself into the history books as the only person to win four Oscars in one night for the same movie. I’m happy for the guy and talk about the highlights from his four speeches in the End Notes below.

I am happy to see the movie get so much love and I hope more people watch it. We are always complaining about sequels and remakes and super hero movies and live action remakes and along comes this truly original film by a guy who has been making original films his entire career. It makes sense to support low budget, independent movies like this if we want more of them made.

And the movie is really good! I watched Anora twice over two days because I found it so entertaining. During the first watch, the narrative momentum swept me up and carried me along. I laughed easily and frequently. The second viewing was more of an appreciation watch to marvel at the filmmaking.

Synopsis

Anora, who prefers to go by Ani, is a young New Yorker who works at a gentleman’s club. We get very familiar with her world and what a shift at work looks like. We meet her boss and coworkers. We see how she interacts with them vs. the clientele. Much is established in the first few minutes of the movie. We follow Ani home and see her train commute, her apartment, her bedroom. Knowing how she lives and spends her time day in an day out, night in and night out, informs why she would make certain decisions later in the movie.

Ani speaks Russian and is asked to serve a young Russian client named Vanya, the son of a powerful Russian oligarch. He takes a liking to her and she to him (and his money). They start meeting outside of work and one thing leads to another (as they tend to do when sex, money, and drugs are involved) and they end up getting married in Vegas. Ani, not really thinking too far ahead or foreseeing any consequences, sees a way out of her situation and she takes it. That’s the first 30 minutes.

The tragedy of the film is that in Ani’s eyes, and I believe in Sean Baker’s eyes as well, she is a person first. She’s a young woman, a 23 year old New Yorker, and her job — to give lap dances and take her clothes off — is what she does to make money and pay the rent on her apartment. If she’s good at her job and hustles, the tips are better. In her mental calculus, now that’s she’s married to a rich person, she doesn’t have to work that job ever again. She quits immediately to go live with Vanya.

But in the eyes of Vanya’s rich and powerful parents, she’s a stripper, a whore, a hooker, a prostitute and she always will be. That is what their impetuous son married and they can’t tolerate this screw up. They send their hired minders to the house to take care of the situation and this is where the movie switches gears and becomes an unpredictable and chaotic good time.

I hope you get a chance to check out Anora.

Thanks for reading,

Kyle

End Notes

Where I talk more about things I care about but didn’t want to bore you in the main review.

Writing, Editing, Directing, Acting

The script is very tight with natural dialogue and people speaking over each other. There are no long moralizing speeches or characters spelling out the themes of the movie. The characters feel like real people saying real things and the camera happens to be there capturing it all.

Baker maintains continuity in a way that I find truly baffling. I’m constantly nit picking continuity. It is my curse. But the lighting and set dressing and state of character dishevelment is maintained perfectly here.

The deliberate directorial choices for who is in frame and who is in focus was something I noticed more on second viewing. My favorite character, Igor (played by Yura Borisov), shares many frames with Ani and his journey is something to pay attention to.¹

The final scene is incredible. Long take, no dialogue, and two actors doing amazing work. Mikey Madison is marvelous as Anora and deserves all the accolades.

Baker’s historic night

I’m happy for Sean Baker and respect the work he does. During his first speech for Original Screenplay, he said “Hi everybody” and then let out a nervous giggle that was so charming. He thanked the sex worker community for sharing their stories and life experiences with him over the years. “My deepest respect — I share this with you.” It’s interesting that during his first and potentially only speech, he thanked the sex worker community. Without them he wouldn’t have any movies and especially no Anora.

During his editing speech he hilariously threw his directing self under the bus, saying “I saved this movie in the edit - that director should never work again.” He also said editing was one half of his directing and one third of his writing, so the award was very validating for him.

When he won best director, he hugged Quentin Tarantino and gave another nervous giggle before pulling out his typed speech about the importance of the theater going experience to our culture.

Where did we first fall in love with movies? At the movie theater. When we can, please watch movies in the theater and lets keep the tradition of the movie going experience alive and well.

It was my favorite speech of the night. I’ll be going to the theater more this year and seeking out indies theaters near me.

When Anora won best picture, he led the cast and crew to the stairs and then stopped, ushering them ahead of him to take the stage first. Karren Karagulian, who was fantastic as Toros in Anora and has been in all of Baker’s films, led the way up to the stage with a statuette in each hand. Vache Tovmasyan (Garnik) held the other one. Yura Borisov can be seen helping fellow cast members up the stairs. Producer Alex Coco then dropped the most staggering stat of the night: Anora cost $6 million, shooting on location, with 40 crew members. Truly a small indie film! Producer Samantha Quan gave a lovely speech and said:

To all of the dreamers and young filmmakers out there, tell the stories you want to tell, tell the stories that move you. I promise you, you will never regret it.

Baker then sent everyone off with “Long live independent film!”

Amen.

1. There’s a shot where he’s sitting on a couch next to a folded up red blanket which says a lot about his character. I love Igor.