Anora has just won best picture at the Oscars, and was one of the most deserving films to win this year. 2024 was a bit of a soft year for movies due to both the behemoth of films that came out in 2023 and the writers strikes of last year. However, Anora was able to rise above all hardship in Hollywood and has firmly cemented itself as 2024’s Best Picture. Director Sean Baker’s seventh feature, Anora, stars Mikey Madison as the titular Anora. Madison is a relative unknown, but is recognizable if you are a fan of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood or the fifth Scream film. Madison also took home the best actress Oscar, rising above Demi Moore in The Substance. Anora is one of the most original movies of the decade, serving as as an incredibly interesting and nuanced portrayal of sex work, wealth inequality, and sexual power.
As previously stated, Mikey Madison won best actress at the Oscars for this role, and for good reason, too. She truly encapsulates the character and offers a calculated, powerful, and raw performance that carefully walks the line between performance and reality within the film itself. She plays a stripper who does work outside of the club she works at, and when a Russian oligarch’s son takes an interest in her, she finds a way into wealth. You can never tell in the first half of this movie whether or not she is really in love with him or if she is only using him for his money, and that is the brilliance of this performance. The audience is in lock step with Anora, or Ani, but doesn’t know which way she will move next. Supporting Madison’s performance is Mark Edelyshtleyn, who plays the son, Vanya, of the oligarch and Yura Borisov, who plays Igor, a heavy hired by Vanya’s father to get Anora and Vanya’s marriage annulled. Karren Karagulian, a Sean Baker frequent, is also in this film as the main mobster who is pushing the annulment further in order to serve Vanya’s father. Ani and Vanya’s happiness is thrown out the window after the Russian gangsters enter Vanya’s father’s mansion and detain Ani while Vanya runs away.
What this movie does is both masterful and weird. A common comparison of this movie has been to the Julia Roberts star vehicle Pretty Woman. And it has similar beats, but this film isn’t interested in the love story of it all. It is more intrigued by what comes after the ignorant bliss of sex and illicit drugs. In fact, only the first 40 minutes of a 140 minute long movie follows a Pretty Woman-esque structure. After that, it turns into an insane eighties movie along the lines of Scorsese’s After Hours or De Palma’s Blow Out. There isn’t the strangeness of the Scorsese movie in Anora or the darkness of the De Palma, but it captures a similar energy and tone that you simply don’t see very often nowadays unless you are a Safdie Brothers aficionado. And it stays this way for a while, with Ani and the Russian goons searching for Vanya along Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, until they finally find him in a hilariously ironic scene back at the club the Ani used to work at. The chaotic nature of this sequence is both a shot of adrenaline and an emotionally exhausting ordeal. And when they eventually find Vanya, there is another half hour of the annulment and more family drama. This movie is seamless whilst also being incredibly episodic. There is also this weird feeling of the film being both character driven and plot driven, and it varies scene to scene. This movie takes wild swings that are always backed up by the way characters feel, which is a real feat of storytelling.
Sean Baker took home best editing at the Oscars as well, and for good reason. This movie is on par with the editing of Uncut Gems and Oppenheimer. Nothing clashes, the shots are well picked, and the color grading is great. It switches from handheld to stable shots so effortlessly that you have to go in with a fine tooth comb to notice it. Everything just works. I am also a bit of a sucker for a mild fisheye lens, so I am going to be praiseful of the cinematography no matter what.
The problems arise when Vanya’s parents show up, and this is easily the weakest part of the film. The performances of the two parents aren’t bad, but they are just a bit undercooked as characters and not written particularly well. The depth that you find everywhere else in this film just isn’t there in these scenes. Mikey Madison’s portrayal, however, is able to go past the script’s shortcomings and the complexity of her performance helps to get the audience through the rough patch.
This film is astounding. It is really a sign of a master filmmaker, and I am very excited to see what he does next.
