Come celebrate Valentine’s Day with the season’s most talked about love story gone wrong. It’s time to discuss Anora in the Split Decision series. Abe Friedtanzer and Juan Carlos Ojano disagree over the merits of this Oscar frontrunner…
ABE FRIEDTANZER: We're starting this conversation one day after one of my favorite films of 2024, Anora, won the Critics Choice Award for Best Picture and nothing else. As you may imagine, I think there's plenty to celebrate about it, and it's a bit strange that it won ONLY the top prize. But it is good to see it back in the awards race after picking up so many critics' prizes and then sort of fading into third or fourth position in most races (like Best Actress). I tried and failed to see Anora at TIFF and then did end up seeing it a few weeks later at a press screening in LA and was quite impressed…
The Florida Project, my first encounter with Sean Baker, was my favorite film of 2017, and I thought it was an exceptional on every level. I wasn't as entirely enamored with Red Rocket, but did appreciate its creativity and the jarring way in which its tone shifts midway through, which Anora does as well. I had watched Mikey Madison on FX's Better Things and seen Yura Burisov in the Oscar-shortlisted Finnish film Compartment No. 6, and those two newly-minted Oscar nominees are only part of what I liked most about the film I'd love most to see win the Oscar for Best Picture. Before I sing more of its praises, can you tell me how you felt about it?
JUAN CARLOS OJANO: I always look forward to anything Sean Baker does (and I also follow him on Letterboxd!). Tangerine was deliciously innovative and The Florida Project was vibrant and invigorating despite its subject matter. I'm yet to watch Red Rocket, but everything I have heard about it - even your take on it - just makes me excited to see it. Given that, I think of Baker as a filmmaker who is very interested in investigating and empathizing with the lives of his protagonists, all of them living in the margins of society. And then I heard the high praise it was getting at Cannes (with a Palme d'Or, no less).
I remained cautiously optimistic while waiting to get to see it. That's probably me just naturally questioning when regularly underappreciated auteurs suddenly break into mainstream conversations. How did it happen? What did he do with his/her new film? Did anything change? I distanced myself from the Anora hive that I witnessed grow, at least on Twitter (never calling it X, by the way). But then I held onto what I believe was the quality of Baker's work.
I finally got to watch it. I thought it was good, great at times even. I'd agree - great cast. I loved Madison ever since I saw her on Better Things. And she is in fine form here. That snappy sense of comedic timing is there as well as her capacity to lend much needed poignancy in crucial moments. For the rest of the cast, it's probably my first time seeing them, but I adored them. My favorite is Yura Borisov's mercurial stoicism, but I am also taken by Mark Eydelshteyn's glorious cluelessness and Karren Karagulian's intense hotheadedness. Filmmaking-wise, I see Baker doing really muscular work here, amplifying the comedic tension with noticeable rigor. For that, I respect this film a lot.
But something's not clicking with me. For all the time we spent with Anora (and it's a lot of time), I felt that the film was missing Baker's stamp as a filmmaker. That empathy, that curiosity in understanding the protagonist, that emotional proximity. We are with Madison for extended periods of time as we see Anora go through the motions in her work as a sex worker - her interactions with co-workers, customers, and housemates - and yet, I'm not seeing Baker's interest in her as a fully formed human being. She is mostly deployed in scenes as a figure, with how she's filmed rarely showing interest in exploring her interiority. Was that the point?
As it stands, I'm not seeing an illuminating portrait of this woman who I spend around two hours of my life with. That's my one big frustration with the film. But how about you: what do you think of how the film depicts Anora herself?
ABE: It's funny that we're having this conversation now, as Anora has gobbled up two major prizes and suddenly become the new frontrunner to win the Oscar for Best Picture, which I'm sure will prompt many to air the same thoughts and issues you have with the film.
I was entranced by this lead character, who from that very first scene where she suggests that her prospective client go to the ATM with her knows how to work every possible angle of her job. When she shows up at Vanya's home for sex, she knows that she's still in control. That shifts in an incredible way during what producer Alex Coco referred to as the "home invasion scene," and I was completely taken by the way that the film just abruptly shifted. I felt like there was a sincere investment in Ani as a character, watching how she pivots when she no longer has the upper hand and, in a few key scenes, tries to be defiant only to have to contend with a new reality where she can't figure a way out of her mess. Her interactions with Igor are particularly phenomenal since he says so little and she's ready to pounce at every opportunity and assign thoughts and intentions that he just doesn't have.
I will admit that the final two or three scenes are not my favorite from the film, but I'm not sure how I would have best ended it. I think that it's an extraordinary journey that really does go off the tracks in the best possible way, and there's a bizarre intimacy to the way that it ends which makes sense given how Ani once again tries to redirect her energy to her next strategy. How did you feel about the film's conclusion?
JUAN CARLOS: I'm already scared that your next reply will come with another significant win for Anora. And why not?
Oh yeah, and I think Madison is a big factor to why that character works as much as it could (even if I have a ceiling to it). She's a game performer who feels lived in, a charm that is both effortless, smooth, but also pointed and deliberately performative, depending on who she is talking to. She's an ace in punching up the comedic beats that's on the page and more, even those that shouldn't work. She delivers lines like "you're a faggot-ass bitch" and "you have rape eyes" with so much character even if those lines feel terribly clunky in terms of characterization.
I was also thrilled by the home invasion scene, just with how that is a very deliberately orchestrated series of clashes. I agree, it's a shift that works well. Humor and drama, comic relief and actual danger. Even the performers are in interestingly different wavelengths, which makes the friction in their interactions even more interesting. I was also invested with the Anora-Igor dynamic because I think Madison is best when she is against the fascinatingly taciturn but potent Borisov. If only the film was more interested in how their dynamic works together in visual terms (I keep seeing them either in separate shots or in two-shots that favor Borisov's reaction more). Nitpicky, I know, but my experience with this film is due to the summation of these small moments.
About the conclusion... ehhh. I have heard criticisms about it. That it's the worst scene of the film, highlighting the film's indulgence to sex worker clichés. That the final sex scene/breakdown implies Anora is using sex as a coping mechanism. That the film, ultimately, has a flattening view of Anora as a sex worker. I get those. But personally, as someone who felt that I was deprived of knowing Anora more than a figure/visual that the film deploys and never really fully engages with, my response was to appreciate that moment of character insight, even if its basis and rationale is probably something that must be questioned to begin with. Basically, it was like "at least I got something".
But with the films we're watching - especially when they're heralded this much - aren't we supposed to demand for more than just "at least I got something"? How about you, what were your issues with the conclusion? Did you see some of those issues permeate other parts of the film as well?
ABE: I didn't have a real issue with the conclusion; it just wasn't my favorite part of the film. I felt like things slowed down a bit and it took us out of the trance that happened from that home invasion scene until right before the end. But I did feel fulfilled by everything that happened earlier, and I still think her breaking down crying was a compelling way to close things out for good. I don't think I saw it as being a sex worker cliché but instead her being back in control, in her element and able to decide what happens for the first time since that critical scene where her dream was shattered.
I'm someone who, much as I might like to, doesn't watch films twice these days since there just isn't time, so it has been a few months since I've seen the film. Yet it still holds up quite well in my memory, and I'm not at all sad about the idea of it now being the Oscar Best Picture frontrunner (I think I feel similarly to how you do with this film about The Brutalist, as you'll see in another one of this Split Decision series). I think a great way to close might be to hear which Oscars you'd be okay with the film winning, and which might make you more upset?
JUAN CARLOS: Having not seen The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, and I'm Still Here as of the time of our chat, I'll say The Substance. It sat as my # 1 film of the year for a very long time. That is a bold creation that actually says something (unlike the mess that is Emilia Pérez which I also discuss in another volley). Nickel Boys is also an audacious piece of empathetic filmmaking, pushing the boundaries of what cinema can do. Just astounding work. But I know what's up with the Oscar races and that's a longshot so... probably Conclave? Delicious pulpy melodramatic thriller dressed as high prestige. And even if I still haven't seen it yet, I am pulling for I'm Still Here just to see our Brazilian cousins take a victory lap.
ABE: I appreciate this lengthy and thoughtful response, though the question I was trying to ask you was what Oscars you'd be okay with Anora winning.
JUAN CARLOS: Oh. Oh! Okay. Uh, I can get behind it winning Supporting Actor for Borisov. He's the part of the film I had least to no issues with. But I don't have strong feelings against the film and the Oscars will do their thing so if it wins more than that, what the hell, sure.
ABE: I'm all for it taking everything since it is my #2 film of the year, with fellow Best Picture nominees Wicked and Conclave also in my top ten, as well as a handful of films that didn't perform as well as they should have: September 5, Dìdi, Sing Sing, and My Old Ass. My #1 pick for 2024, It's What's Inside, which premiered at Sundance before selling to Netflix, was never going to be an awards movie but I believe really should have been and is absolutely deserving of a watch.
JUAN CARLOS: Truth be told, I am not as invested in Best Picture on a personal level simply because my favorites are from the outliers. The one that unseated The Substance as my # 1 was Flow (nominated for Animated Feature and International Feature), utterly magical and powerful. Then there's No Other Land (nominated for Documentary Feature), Ghostlight, and Evil Does Not Exist (both not nominated for any Oscars) rounding up a rough top five. Beyond that, my favorites of the year are all not nominated for Best Picture.
I think cinema is at a crossroads right now. AI, dwindling box-office turnouts, censorship, corporate interests, political instability. Acknowledging what is happening in Hollywood and in the world right now, I do believe the future of cinema as an artform is with independent cinema, world cinema, and documentary filmmaking. And in 2024, if Anora becomes the symbol of what kind of cinema the industry wants to champion moving forward, then I will be here for it.
ABE: I think that wraps up our conversation. I'm grateful that you found things to like and acknowledge about the film and challenged me to think more critically about it as well. May the Best Picture win!
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