"Anora:" A Success Story Nobody Saw Coming

Nearly halfway through the decade, Hollywood wants us to know that the movies are back and bigger than ever, and with awards season coming up, Hollywood is keen to let us know how great of a job they did this year preserving artistic merit and giving us our money’s worth. Many of the films dominating the conversation are eager to prove just how bombastic and gargantuan they are. Bob Dylan redefined popular music, The Substance birthed the horror movie monster of the decade, and Luca Guadagnino directed the most intense tennis match/sexual catharsis Hollywood has ever seen.

But standing alongside these deafening behemoths is an entirely different film. A movie that’s meandering and trivial, floating through its New York setting and eventually plodding to a long and understated conclusion. It’s a movie with no heart stopping climax or thrilling chase sequence, it’s decidedly “small” next to the thunderous spectacle of its peers. That film is Sean Baker’s Anora, and it could end up as the unsung hero of the upcoming awards season. 

It’s important to note that Anora’s inclusion in the awards race isn’t a shock. Baker is no stranger to the awards circuit. His films consistently pick up smaller awards for independent films and The Florida Project ended up scoring an Academy Award nomination for Willem Dafoe’s supporting performance. Even Anora has already proved its merit with multiple Golden Globe nominations and winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the first American film to do so in over a decade. However lauded it may be, Baker’s film is entering a new arena with the Hollywood awards circuit. While its challenging and creative style is readily equipped for the artistic battlefield of Cannes, against the crowd pleasing technical wizardry of Hollywood, victory is not certain. 

In past years, Anora very well may have been the indie blip that the Academy acknowledges from a large distance. However this year, it seems like the gap is closing, and the difficult and adventurous indie darling of the year may be primed for Oscar gold.

Anora is a dizzying and genre bending journey through Brooklyn told through the lens of a spontaneous romance between sex worker Ani and Ivan, the son of a Russian oligarch. In typical Baker fashion, the plot feels secondary as the camera glides along with the characters through the city’s underbelly. Interestingly, Anora comes across as Baker’s most fragmented work to date, with a plot that can be divided into sections by style and genre. It’s part romance, part screwball comedy, and part sobering drama, yet it stays cohesive and consistent throughout. It’s deeply empathetic and humanist, turning a spotlight to the margins of society to tell a universal story of kindness and independence. 

In my opinion, Anora may just be the strongest feature of the year. It’s moving, funny, unique and unforgettable. It’s also a breath of fresh air from a filmmaker who consistently reinvents himself and plays with the medium to consistently fantastic results. Despite my praise and the rapturous critical acclaim, Anora still seems to be fighting an uphill battle at the Academy Awards, and it has nothing to do with quality.

For this year’s award contenders, the sky's the limit. The films dominating the conversation label themselves as essential and remarkable, unforgettable events that are impossible to look away from. They are long and the stakes are high, these are films engineered to dominate the attention of the audience. While the Oscar often goes to whichever film stirs up enough of a ruckus, it feels like the volume is exceptionally high this year across the board. Amid the din is Anora. Ani doesn’t have to save the world, she doesn’t bring one of the biggest broadway shows of all time to life, she isn’t electing a new pope, by the time the story ends, Brooklyn stays the same. Beyond that, Anora hardly raises the stakes within its own story universe. There are no moments of dramatic outburst, no revealing monologue, we hardly get to know the titular character. 

In the world of the Academy Awards, it seems like Anora barely has a chance, but that’s what makes it such a compelling competitor. Anora’s greatest strength is its restrained emotion. It encourages the viewer to lean forward and dig rather than sit back and admire. Anora is just as crucial as other films, however the volume is intentionally muted. The film plays out like a story you see on local news, it can easily be condensed into one sentence. But Sean Baker doesn’t conclude his story there. He understands the immense depth and humanity bubbling just under the surface of the story, and rather than explode it, he lets it sit. The result is a film that feels rewarding because it feels discovered. It rewards attention and empathy.. Characters are crass and flawed, and we aren’t granted a reason as to why, at least not in any unnecessary flashback scene or monologue. Baker’s film is a mirror to real life, we aren’t rewarded with expositional montages, we are merely asked to accept one another as we are. Perhaps it’s this very nature of Anora that’ll bring it awards gold. 

In an era of attention grabbing bombastic entertainment, the ones that rise above are no longer the loudest. Anora’s subdued drama and laid back slapstick moves against the grain, discarding the medium bending grandiosity of its contemporary peers for a condensed story about people and their problems. It’s not a melodrama, nor is there an ending with a bow. It’s ambiguous and difficult, it’s funny but also sad. At the end of the day, in a landscape filled with the magic Oz and the danger of Arrakis, Anora is achingly human. And while it may not be simple to understand, it’s easy to feel. Cinema can show us a lot of amazing things, but most amazing of all is its ability to mirror humanity, warts and all. Amid the extraordinary is the magnetic, confusing, and beautifully ordinary human, and sometimes that’s exactly what we need to see.