Anora won big at the Oscars. Here's how I think this happened and why I wasn't impressed by the new Best Picture winner.
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I wasn't planning on writing a review of Anora. To my mind, it was another decent independent film with a strong central performance that could be a springboard for lead actress Mikey Madison and perhaps move writer/director Sean Baker into more rarified director air (i.e. a more mainstream name versus "indie darling"). I also didn't have the same reaction to the movie a lot of other critics did and while it's fun to be contrarian, I also don't like discouraging people from seeing independent movies. But after last night's Oscars where the movie won most of the major awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay. I thought now would be a good time.
Both to put the movie in context (i.e. why I think it won the awards it did), and why my reaction differs from the critical mass.
The Setup
Mikey Madison plays Ani, a sex worker who does the majority of her work in a strip club. But Ani gets the opportunity of a lifetime when Ani is linked up with a Russian oligarch's son who first wants to pay for Ani's company and then wants to marry her. All of which brings down a cascading series of misadventures as the boy's father sends in his goons to both annul the wedding and find his now missing son.
Before we get into my negative feelings on this movie, I want to first go into two thing: why I think this movie ultimately ended up winning big at the Oscars and what I like about this movie.
So let's talk Oscars.
Why Anora Won Big (My Take)
When looking at the cadre of other nominees in the major categories, almost all of them come with some kind of baggage either in production, content, or simply the kind of movie in question.
The Best Picture category is the best example.
Almost every other movie on this list either comes with some kind of controversy, or fits into a category of film the Oscars like to nominate and ignore (outside of technical or production categories).
- The Brutalist has gotten near universal praise for its performances and the film itself, but has been hampered by accusations on the use of AI, specifically for background details and art which the director later admitted to. Is it overblown? Perhaps, but this is a bad time to be putting your weight behind the "AI movie" in an artistic medium.
- Emilia Perez was easily the most controversial pick of the bunch because a lot of people flat out hate this movie. The reasons are expansive, but the biggest thing you need to know is that it is a French person's version of a Mexican musical about the transgender experience with a lead who has spent the majority of her time on social media spouting off other minority groups she hates. So maybe you can vote for Zoe Saldana, because she seems chill, but not for the movie itself.
- I'm Still Here and Nickel Boys are unfortunately in the category of "movie not enough people have seen." Both films have nearly universal acclaim but Nickel Boys' distribution to theaters was deemed so bad, that numerous articles have been written about how this may have tanked the film's chances of winning any Oscars or being seen by a wide audience.
- The Substance, Wicked and Dune: Part Two are a horror movie and two blockbuster films, which the Academy has a distaste for.
- A Complete Unknown has controversy of its own, both because Bob Dylan apparently hates the entire idea, and the sea has started to change around music biopics.
- The biggest other contender, at least in my mind, was Conclave which is about as Oscar movie-like as this category gets without being a blockbuster. But it is also a movie that takes place entirely at the Vatican and features a number of elements Catholics may object to so...
The "slice of life misadventure" movie with a young sex worker who was hoping to escape the daily grind, wins. It's an indie darling with a solid lead performance that at least makes gestures towards familiar experiences or what's going on in the world (it's hard out there). So there ya go.
Now I doubt this is how it won. Academy voters often skip movies because they're too long and vote for their favorite, but I think is a good way to make sense of Anora's unexpected win. So before I get into what bugs me about this movie, I want to get into what I like about it.
What Works: The Vibe/Undercurrent
As a filmmaker, Sean Baker has excelled at three things: putting sex workers on screen, capturing the feeling/vibe of being his lead characters and, for the most part, avoiding making these situation seem harrowing. And Anora does all of this really well.
In this film, Ani is not ashamed of her chosen line of work. The strip club has the same air as any other workplace with a boss you kind of respect but also clash with, the best friend at work, and a very working approach to sex work. It doesn't feel dangerous. It just feels like a job, even when Ani goes to visit this young man at his mansion or agrees to marry him. He's young and impulsive, and far too rich to understand what he's doing, but he's not an asshole. If anything Ani seems more than capable of guiding him to do what she wants or placating his worst habits with sex.
And while it isn't love, it is very easy to see why Ani says yes and why marrying this young wealthy dummy sounds like a great idea. And then his parents find out
In any other movie, the arrival of muscle from Russia would be what turns this movie from a slice of life into an absolutely nightmare. But what Anora makes clear is that the men who are here to annul this wedding are workers just like Ani, even if Ani, rightly, views them as a threat to what she wants, which is a life with her new husband. This is a mess they've been asked to clean up and they're doing their best to do it with as little collateral damage as possible.
There's also a looming sense of disconnect and dread on Ani's part because each location they go-to either reinforces the levels the boy's family will go to to end this marriage or the boy's immaturity. And then that dread and discomfort is undercut by another thing going wrong.
What I like about this is that it highlights how wealthy people are often completely unaware of how they impact the people around them. Vanya, the young man, may not be looking to hurt anyone, but he also has no semblance of responsibility and will probably go on to hurt women like Ani over and over again. Which sucks for someone like Ani who thought that at the very least, she had some kind of stability.
I get all of that and I like that part of the movie. Here's what irks me about this movie.
Frustration #1: Intimacy Coordinators
The only reason I was surprised about Anora's wins was a number of comments coming from star Mikey Madison how they did not use intimacy coordinators for a film full of sex scenes, nudity and beyond. Considering how Madison speaks about Baker and everyone else in the film, it doesn't sound like she was pressured to perform without one, and was in fact offered one. She turned it down.
That being said, Madison is a twenty-something working actress in a movie directed and coordinated by a fifty something year old director with a decent reputation (Baker) and his nearly fifty year old wife (producer Samantha Quan). You get her an intimacy coordinator to avoid any kind of power imbalance.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but during an Actors on Actors conversation, Madison was paired with Pamela Anderson who raised concerns about how much sexual content was in the film (and Anderson would know a thing or two about sexual exploitation). I'm not saying Madison needed to be saved from jerks, but if I'm directing a movie I want to avoid any whiff of a power imbalance or pressure to perform outside of a comfort zone.
So now let's get into my biggest issue with this movie.
Frustration #2: Humanizing Sex Workers
Sean Baker has written and directed four feature length films since 2015. And all four of his films include sex work as an integral part of their story.
- Tangerine is a wild comedy about trans sex workers
- The Florida Project features sex work as a plot point in how the lead little girl's mother ends up making money.
- Red Rocket follows a former porn star trying to make a living in his hometown and;
- Now we have Anora which is all about a sex worker looking to leave the life via marrying a rich Russian oligarch's son.
Portraying sex work on screen, sans judgment of the profession, is a good thing. Because everyone is a human being, and being in sex work doesn't mean a person is lesser than someone working a 9-5 office job or customer service.
The problem with Baker's movies, and his portrayal of sex work, is that outside of portraying sex work as a job, he seems to have very little interest in the inner lives of these characters, what draws or drew them to sex work in the first place, or their ultimate motivations.
Putting it another way, what does the audience learn about Ani in Anora? What does she like? What does she hate? What are her dreams? Does she really feel an affection for Vanya or is this all about securing money for her? Her acceptance of Vanya's proposal is the biggest action or indicator of her character in the entire film. So can assume, at the very least, she's eager for that kind of financial stability.
Almost anything else you can project onto Ani is implied through performance or the camera. Almost nothing else is said.
I actually know more about Vanya, who is absent for half the movie. I know he likes video games, but he's not that great at them. I know he's impulsive. I know he's rebellious enough to do things his family won't like, but also too cowardly to push back too much. I know he's far too used to using his money to get his way or act out. Ani is along for the ride with all of this stuff, but rarely, if ever, provides commentary on it.
The biggest critique I've seen levied against Anora is that there is no separation between Ani and her job. Which in my opinion is because we don't to learn anything about her. Or see her saving money for something. Or hear her talk about what her life before Vanya looked like. This is allegedly a romantic comedy/drama where it's unclear if either side of the married couple actually cares about the other one.
The more I've thought about Anora, the more I thought about Lorene Scarfaria's film Hustlers and how much better that movie is at avoiding shame regarding sex work, portraying its characters as human beings and financial crunch.
The sex workers in Hustlers all have lives at home. They have kids. They have rent. They have bills they need to pay. And they're living in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, which has removed a large swathe of the jobs they would do besides stripping or other forms of sex work. Even Jennifer Lopez's barn-burning striptease scene is followed by here wrapping up Costance Wu like a mama bear in a big fur coat. It's all part and parcel to her character's charisma and why she later becomes the perfect person to run a crime ring.
In Anora, Ani's humanity only exists because Mikey Madison wills it to be on screen through her acting. That doesn't mean you can't be engaged or devastated by the film's conclusion, because I do think Madison gives an amazing performance. But that void is why I left Anora feeling empty. Not because of what Ani had lost. But because I never knew what she was trying to gain.
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