Anora (Sean Baker, October 18, 2024) Movie • Page 5

Appreciate this! I’m always scared to come into the entertainment forums with a grumpy view but I’m always ready to be enticed into a deeper understanding!

 

Anora wants to stay with him because he is her Cinderella story. There’s obviously nothing about the guy himself that’s likable — the movie makes no attempt to give him any positive personality qualities for Anora to find attractive. And it’s not like he gave her so much more attention or affection than any other guy ever has.

Prior to him proposing (even in the middle of that bedroom scene where he ultimately proposes), she is under no delusion that what he’s giving her is a permanent thing. She is thinking rationally — that she is just a prostitute and this is just a one-time gift that fell in her lap. But when it becomes explicitly more than that, she convinces herself that what they have is real, because it has to be.

I feel like some reviews I’m seeing don’t want to just acknowledge that simple fact, because doing so naturally leads to thinking like “well then that makes Anora deeply superficial and marrying a guy for money is so shallow, and I want to like her but I don’t like people who do that stuff.”

But that’s the point! She is a stripper/prostitute who makes very little money, and she is now offered the good life and the opportunity to become part of the upper crust of society! In one sense it’s explicitly shallow, in another it is by far the most reasonable and rational move for someone in her situation to make, and so many people would do the exact same thing if given the opportunity. It doesn’t make her a “good” person, it makes her human.

And then it all quickly comes crashing down. Her real delusion wasn’t in thinking that what she and Ivan had was real. It was in thinking that she would ever actually be accepted into the upper crust. Like so many people, it isn’t until she actually interacts with the people who Matter that she realizes just how insignificant she will always be to the them. It’s only Igor — a similarly replaceable grunt (who, in any other movie, probably wouldn’t have been given a single line of dialogue) — who is able to empathize with her

 

When Anora did her whole “i never signed a prenup” spiel the crowd at my theater applauded and i was just thinking, “you guys that’s Disney logic, get real” lol i really love how multiple times this movie seemed to juke the artist based on their preconceptions about how movies will work.

 

Were you at my showing lol

thankfully it was just one group that did.

 

Lol if you saw it at the Music Box in Chicago, then yes. It’s usually a pretty interactive crowd there, so it was like the vast majority of the crowd hooting and hollering.

 

Then no haha.

my theater was crowded but mostly was chill, laughing where appropriate and not being obnoxious or anything. Except for the one group during that scene

 

I literally thought that my audience was going to applaud right there too haha.

 

I saw it there this afternoon (that is now one of two local theaters to me since I moved) and the crowd was definitely interactive haha

 

One of my absolute favorite places in the entire city!

 

Yeah there were many points where I was half-expecting them to just be like “okay well we’re just going to kill you and leave you on the side of the road because that would be easier than going through the proper channels.” Like her legal claim doesn’t matter at all, if she went ahead with it then they would destroy her in any possible way, and nobody would care because she’s just so no-name stripper

At best she could have asked for *way* more money up-front as part of the agreement to just nullify it and get out of their hair immediately. Like a million dollars probably would have been nothing to them lol

 

Was it ever explicitly stated who Ivan’s parents are? Like it’s obviously implied that they’re important but I definitely went into this assuming they were like the mob or something. But then the longer it went on I was like maybe they’re just high up in the Russian gov’t? But then with all the talk about bringing Ivan back home to “work” I’m like are they just billionaire business moguls or something? I never really got the vibe that they were extremely dangerous or like Anora was in legitimate danger

 

just that they're billionaire Russian oligarchs , and they all seem to be in real estate which would explain the mcmansion

 

Idk how you *didnt* get the feeling that she was in legitimate danger — if you have what are pretty clearly just straight-up henchmen a whole continent away, I would never in a million years think you *werent* the type who would be willing to kill people lol. Especially Russian oligarchs of all people, who pretty much all have a mountain of bodies trailing behind them

 

Yeah I guess maybe it was just the henchmen themselves taking the edge off for me - they were all so goofy & incompetent and didn’t appear at any point even remotely prepared to harm her upon order, like they didn’t even show up with a way to restrain her or anything. Even when the mom claps back after the prenup comment, I got more “we’ll drown you in financial ruin” vibes more than “we’ll put your ass in the ground”. But yeah willing to accept that it’s probably just a bad read on my part haha

 

I don't think he forgets they're fake I just think he wants to tell emotionally believable stories.

I think just as it does a great job conveying how awful the second half of the film was for her, I think it did a wonderful job in the first half showing why she married him and why she so badly wanted it to work.

I think Ivan is likable in the first section of the film despite being very immature and it's clear she enjoys his company more and more as time goes on. Of course that's going to be hugely enhanced by the fact that he's mega rich and is showing her a life of wealth and freedom she has never experienced and likely never would have. It seems like she's having the time of her life, then she gets a future of security and leisure with a guy she likes flashed before her eyes before having it ripped away as quickly as it came. Then she has the image of this guy who she thought genuinely cared for her and wanted to build a life together completely shattered when she realises how pathetic he truly is and that he never actually planned to be with her at all, she was just a plaything for a rich kid to be discarded. She let her guard down because she wanted it so badly to be true, she wanted a fairy tale ending where all her worries were over, and for a second she had it.

Edit: I see other people have already replied to this and probably did a better job at explaining lol.

 

Not opening here again this weekend. The worst part is the local theaters don't even list films like this in their upcoming pages like all the mindless sequels; they just show up one Friday.

 

I travelled for an hour to an inferior cinema and spent £20 when I usually don't pay because the place by me said they weren't getting it. Now it's there.

 

That has happened to me too many times. I know sooner or later one of the five local theaters will get it sooner or later but it is still disappointing.

 

You'd think that theaters that need people to come buy tickets and concessions would proudly announce what movies they have coming each week

 

This lived up to the hype for me, very enjoyable and the ending hit.

Don’t love the use of the F slur though, especially knowing Sean’s kind of a sack of shit.

 

huh?

 

One character calls another a “***got ass bitch” multiples times

 

i meant what is it that makes baker "kind of a sack of shit"

 

It’s on the last page, he’s like a right leaning Zionist guy.

 

I’m worried the baby thinks people can’t change