Title: Anora
Year: 2024
Director: Sean Baker
Country: US
Language: English
At the 97th Academy Awards, Sean Baker's Anora won five Oscars. These were Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It was a very well liked film prior to the Oscars, having won Palm D'or at Cannes, but it wasn't really considered a front-runner until a few weeks prior to the show. I'm pretty happy that such a low budget movie won such a prestigious award. Made for $6 million, Baker proves that great storytelling can surpass big budget spectacles.
Written, Directed, and Co-Produced by Sean Baker, Anora is a film with relentless energy. Despite it being 2hr 30min, it feels like a film with half that run-time as we go from Cinderella fairytale to Slapstick comedy to meaningful reflection on capitalism & class division. Baker really pulls us into Anora's world - giving us an empathetic glimpse of a life of a sex worker on the fringes of society. We relate to her because we are the same working class trying to not be exploited by the careless 1%.
We also empathize with the hired goons, Igor (Yura Borisov) and Nick (Paul Weissmann), who are men also exploited by capitalism & have to disrupt Anora's marriage as part of their job. They are fairly non-violent, which adds to the escalating tension & funny-as-hell slapstick that permeates the middle of the film. They have to restrain Anora, while getting beaten up by her. This results in a broken nose, falls through the table. It feels very much like a Three Stooges routine.
I was very impressed by Anora. it had me interested in Sean Baker's other works like The Florida Project (2017). Baker does a great job at highlighting marginalized people & bringing awareness to people who are lower class. After watching the film, I had a lot of thoughts regarding class, gender and how we can improve society for people like Anora. Baker has made an important film that, hopefully, will be regarded as a classic in the future.
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