How is Anoras Oscar win going to age?
After one of the strangest and most controversial Oscar races in recent memory, a polarizing movie, warranting tons of strong opinions online, inevitably rose to top. The Sean Baker film Anora won five of its eight nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Actress for Mikey Madison. Its been a weird road to Oscars glory for the critically-lauded movie, which won the prestigious Palme dOr at last years Cannes Film Festival. The comedy-drama, about a strip club dancer whose fairytale marriage to the son of a Russian oligarch suddenly goes haywire, generated early buzz but took a backseat for much of awards season, losing screenwriting and direction awards to films like Conclave and The Brutalist. The movie shockingly left the Golden Globes empty-handed. While the film experienced a bit of a lop-sided awards season, it had a steady presence online as one of the most discoursed movies of the past year second only to two-time Oscar winner Emilia Prez. While the movie impressed most critics and clearly the Academy, Anora has been a lightning rod on film-interested corners of X, Letterboxd, and among sex workers and even the movies own army of stans. First, there was the revelation from Madison that she didnt use an intimacy coordinator for the films sex scenes after being given the option by Baker. It quickly raised questions about Baker as a professional and his relationship to actor protections that have become standard in the wake of MeToo. In fact, much of the conversation surrounding the movie has been centered on Baker, whose politics and intentions as an auteur have often been hard to map. Following the celebrated release of his third film Tangerine in 2015, about a pair of Black, trans sex workers, his low-budget filmography has been exclusively dedicated to portraying sex workers, in what hes repeatedly described as an effort to remove the stigma from the industry and offer an unrepresented class visibility. While accepting the Palme dor for Anora, he dedicated the award to sex workers past, present and future. And in his acceptance speech for Best Original Screenplay, he dutifully thanked the sex worker community. The cast of Anora posing with the Palme dOr Award for Anora during the Closing Ceremony at the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival on May 25, 2024 in Cannes, France. Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty ImagesStill, questions about Bakers relationship to depicting sex work loom larger than ever, particularly with his latest work Anora, with some in the profession logging thoughtful essays about their concerns with Bakers work. Why does his treatment of these characters, specifically women, feel so regressive? For someone whos mined stories from the same marginalized profession over and over again, why has he only been able to come up with anything other than reductive stereotypes? Anora has been marketed as a love story from Sean Baker. Yet it might be his film thats most lacking in sentimentality and tenderness for his characters (a Baker hallmark, even if it often comes out in the form of pity). The movie follows a 23-year-old stripper named Ani (Madison) who elopes with the son of a rich Russian family named Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) after meeting him at her club. Her rags-to-riches romance comes to an abrupt and jarring end when several henchmen show up to Vanyas Brighton Beach mansion, under his familys direction, demanding that their marriage be annulled. Vanya flees the scene, leaving Ani alone to fight off the henchmen who inevitably abduct her and bring her along on their search for Vanya. This drawn-out set piece and all of its violence Ani screaming as shes being bound and bent over on a couch, Ani screaming rape! as a cry for help is played-for-laughs and unsettling to watch. In a review for Angel Food Magazine, Marla Cruz illustrates how this sequence undermines the commonplace violence that sex workers are vulnerable to: Crystallized by the moment she repetitively yells rape! to the goons bewilderment, Anis fear is sublimated into feminine histrionics. The camera cuts to a close up of her screaming mouth, encouraging the audience to identify with the men in their mission to get this unruly woman under control by gagging her with a red scarf. Bakers direction never really sympathizes with Ani or even acknowledges the level of physical and emotional violation shes experiencing throughout the film, constantly undercutting it with anti-PC comedy, or, in more frustrating moments, positioning her as a problem to a group of men who simply are just trying to do their jobs. Viewers are encouraged to gawk, laugh, and essentially normalize her subjugation. Ani is dragged around, humiliated, and stripped of all control until she has an emotional breakdown at the end of the film while shes mounting a man. Through this lens, the entire movie is just another reductive if not moralistic tale of a sex workers suffering. A consistent flaw in Bakers work (with the exception of 2019 film Red Rocket) is that while his movies illustrate their characters economic positioning in arguably amusing and sometimes compelling ways, they lack a sharp point of view. In the same vein, his characters often want for interiority, using naturalistic dialogue to a cover-up shallow characterization. Despite the movie being titled Anora, audiences dont leave knowing much about her her desires, her fears, her family, her past. We only know whats done to her. Mikey Madison and Mark Eydelshteyn in Anora NeonAnora is heavily influenced by films of the 70s, bringing to mind Jane Fondas iconic call girl from the 1971 film Klute, as a point of comparison. Fondas character serves as a reminder of the self-determination and agency sex workers can have in film, while still reckoning with the real threats of danger they live under. When Baker attempts to depict Ani as strong-willed, its largely in moments where she comes off as offensive, immature, and a class traitor. Yet, in situations involving money, where she should presumably execute the most authority and cleverness, shes markedly passive and naive. She remains quiet watching Vanya accrue gambling losses at a casino. When he proposes to her, she sassily demands an engagement ring that has at least three karats, when he could afford much more. Most shocking, she demands only $15,000 to be Vanyas horny American girlfriend for a week. After shaking on the offer, Vanya tells her that she shouldve asked for more. She still doesnt. Ultimately, Anora may fall into the category of Oscar-winning movies that seem like a cool, progressive choice on paper, but are ridden with problems and critiques from the communities they purport to represent. There are other factors that have presumably lent to this win, too. Baker is one of the few modern auteurs whos been unwavering in his commitment to making independent cinema for over 20 years now. Anora is also a monument to 70s filmmaking canon, an era of cinema that Hollywood has heralded as an emblem of taste. With Anora, Baker puts himself in the conversation with celebrated auteurs like John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese, and Robert Altman. If only his work contained some of that eras more radical politics and subversive representations. See More:
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