ANORA (WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY SEAN BAKER)
Controversies, as they seem to every year, swirled around the announcement of last year's Oscar nominations. Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez seemed like a leader for a Best Picture award, given that it lead the pack with 13 nominations. But backlash against the film, coming from people in Mexico understandably lamenting the fact that a French film maker had made their country look like a drug war blasted hell hole, and from some trans people for the way that the title character was portrayed, sank that film's chances, although it would still win 2 Oscars for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song. (It also didn't help that the film's lead actress, Karla Sofía Gascón, had made several racist and xenophobic posts on Twitter in the past). A stranger controversy arose when it was discovered that Brady Corbet"s The Brutalist had used artificial intelligence to help out with some scenes, all of which seemed overblown to me. While it understandable that Hollywood is afraid of AI being used to replace people in the business (AI may be able to crank out a simple script in moments), the use of it in The Brutalist was just to tweak a few minor things. But it still seemed to work against the film. With two other contenders mired in these issues, that left the eventual winner, Sean Baker's Anora, to walk away not only with best picture, but also Best Director, Best Actress (Mikey Madison), Best Supporting Actor (Yura Borisov), Best Original Screenplay (Baker) and Best Editing (Baker, again). Baker, who has been directing low budget independent movies for years, walked home with 4 Oscars, a record number of wins for one person from one movie. Personally, I don't get the appeal of Anora at all. I've seen the film twice now, before and after its victory, wondering if I had missed something after my first viewing, and if anything I disliked it more the second time. For me, this is quite simply one of the worst films to win Best Picture ever, and I would have preferred any of the nine other films nominated to have won, plus a few others that weren't even nominated!
I will admit that Baker came to make the film for interesting reasons: along with directing low budget films, he had spent some time editing videos for Russian weddings, and he also claims that he got the idea for the film when he heard about a Russian wedding in which the bride was kidnapped for collateral! He also hired Andrea Werhun, a Canadian writer and actress who wrote her memoir, Modern Whore, in 2018, as a consultant. He cast Mikey Madison for the lead role after seeing in her other films and shot the film for six million dollars in 37 days in various Brooklyn locations. The studio, sensing that they had a sleeper hit on their hands, spent three times the film's budget on promoting it. A wise move that made the film profitable even before winning Best Picture. So far it's made over forty six million dollars worldwide.
It's set in modern day Brooklyn, and it tells the story of Anora (Madison), a young stripper who meets up with wealthy 21 year old Russian club visitor Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) after he asks for a dancer who knows Russian. He eventually invites her over to his mansion, and then hires her for a week, asking her to be his "horny girlfriend". After a few days of partying, he takes her on an impulsive trip to Las Vegas. After lamenting that he will soon have to return to Russia to work at his father's company, he thinks that marrying an American will allow him to stay, so he and Anora quickly marry and then return to New York. Inevitably, his family back home find out about the marriage and send out hired goons Toros (Karren Karagulian), Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov ) to work things out.
Hollywood has always enjoyed making movies about the people (most of whom are women) that work in the sex trade. Part of the appeal seems to be giving the audience a chance to see how people who live a very different lifestyle than most of the audience get by, and another appeal seems to be having an excuse to show lots of female nudity that's excused as part of the film's plot. (And there's certainly plenty of that in Anora!). Not that I think that all films about people in the sex industry are bad. For example, Anora very much reminds me of the far superior 1957 Federico FelliniI classic The Nights of Cabiria, which also tells the story of a sex worker with a chance for happiness in far more moving fashion. It was turned into a Broadway musical called Sweet Charity by director Bob Fosse in 1966, who also turned it into a movie musical with Shirley MacLaine three years later. I prefer that film to Anora too.
No, my problem with Anora doesn't lie in its subject matter, but in its plot, which is simplistic, predictable (I knew how this film was going to end from just seeing the preview!) and stretched to the breaking point in a film that lasts over two hours that should have ended at ninety minutes. For example, there's a sequence in which Anora and the three hired goons hired by her husband's father all go looking for Ivan in a car that feels like being trapped on a road trip with people who hate each other. Between endless moments of profane rudeness to each other, there are equally endless scenes of them asking about Ivan that quickly grow repetitive. Significant cutting would have made these boring scenes play better. I also found the films closing scenes absurdly drawn out when the main story is over.
And I also had trouble caring about any of the characters: the film's first few minutes, just showing how Anora works at her strip club, enticing clients into the private rooms, chatting during a cigarette break, are all quite good. But once Ivan shows up, I lost interest. The scenes where Ivan shows Anora his wealthy, party heavy lifestyle were dull to me; why should I care how a spoiled, entitled brat like him lives? His main interests seem to only be getting wasted, sex, and video games, and he seems more interested in the games than Anora. He also laughs loudly at his own dumb jokes, raps terribly and is rude to a hotel manager in Las Vegas. Quite a guy! He gets even worse as the film goes on: his proposal to Anora is halfhearted at best, and, worst of all, when confronted by his parent's hired men about his quickie marriage, he just runs away without Anora, leaving her to face them alone.
This leads to my big problem with Anora's character: she's a complete idiot. Time and time again in the film she maintains that her marriage to a man she's known for a week is a legitimate romance, even when he shows little interest in her beyond sex. Even when he abandons her. And perhaps most foolish of all, she even tries to present herself to Ivan's mother (Darya Ekamasova, who's steely eyed performance is the only one in the movie I liked) as a loving daughter in law, enthusiastic to join the family. How could she possibly believe that Ivan's mother flew half way across the world just to meet her? I also found the title character to be abrasive; Madison studied up on her Brooklyn accent, and I think she often hits it too hard. And I cringed at the way she calls Igor a "bitch ass f----t" twice and starts a brawl with another stripper. And yes, this is yet another movie in which a character is portrayed as being passionate by having them constantly say "fuck" (The word is used by her and others over four hundred times in this movie, to diminishing effect). All that said, I will give Madison this; she played the part all out, especially in the scene in which she screams and wrestles with Garnik, Ivan and Toros. Her enthusiastic biting, clawing and kicking are probably what won her the Oscar, but for me, like much of the film, I thought the scene went on way too long, and I could have done without her screaming.
Interestingly, Madison's win for Best Actress was seen as a bit of an upset over Demi Moore's performance in body horror satire The Substance, and while I did find that film uneven, I would have given it to Moore over Madison. (The irony of this is that Moore played a celebrity dealing with aging in The Substance, and then she then lost the award out to a much younger star.). But then, I would have preferred the Oscar go to Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, or to Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton for The Room Next Door, or Zendaya in Challengers, and none of them were even nominated, so obviously the Academy and I don't see eye to eye.
SO DID THE ACADEMY GET IT RIGHT?
It's pretty obvious that I just don't care for this film. While I'm usually glad to see a low budget independent film win, I'm not when I find it to be such an unpleasant viewing experience. My favorite movie of the year was Mohammad Rasoulof's outstanding Iranian dramatic thriller, The Seed of the Sacred Fig. I also loved Babygirl and The Room Next Door. But then, as I previously stated, I would have preferred any of the Best Picture nominees over this lousy movie. But hey, it obviously has its fans, and if after reading my opinions you still want to give it a try, I won't discourage you.
