Consolation Prize | Anora (2024) Movie Review | #OscarsHomework
Watching 2nd half of this year’s Best Picture was MY consolation prize for missing Oscars 😣
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It’s the most glamorous time of the year…
Well, I hosed* myself.
*That’s what they say, where I grew up. In Texas. In ‘polite society’ or ‘mixed company,’ (Texas is a state so backwards in regards to gender politics, we/they still have a word for when you mix the implicitly naturally-separate sexes), it’s a silly word that isn’t quite a swear or a slur (though those are often fine, too, to a problematic extent) you can use in place of stronger language, which isn’t decorous.
I really, actually wanted to see the 97th Annual (feels like 197th Annual, though, amirite?) Academy Awards, hosted by my second-favorite ginger (1st is myself; third is either Shaun White or Emma Stone, even though she’s not really a redhead), Conan O’Brien, and was pretty certain I had a Hulu subscription through Verizon that I just never use.
But I did not count on Hulu being tied to Apple (natch), and therefore their billing, and I’ve had to cut Apple off from any access to my money because I’d wake up to long strings of texts like I was married to some sort of degenerate gambler and I was getting ATM receipts all at once when the bank opened.
Therefore, I am in arrears with (protesting, I would say) the whole Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu/ABC ecosystem, and don’t think it isn’t giving me fits to have to steal Severance, often a full day late. My conscience alone — such a dreadful pain, it gives me.
It does sincerely pain me to miss Conan doing his thing. I’m sure he’s performing capably and admirably, and it’s probably still boring navel-gazing, even so, but still…
I had hoped.
Anyway, since I’ll now be catching up with the Oscars and my #OscarsHomework predictions and prognostications through highlights and recaps, I elected to just roll right through and finish Anora, which I loved.
What a fun movie. What a fun character.
I theorized that my favorite character in cinema this year might be Moana again, from Moana 2 (even though that movie was cobbled together from multiple installments of a television show), but I think having seen the full slate of offerings, Ani from Anora is my favorite character of the year, and in, perhaps, a long while.
That is due in no small part to how authentically Ani is written, and how authentically and energetically Ani is played by Mikey Madison.
[editor’s note: I checked on a couple of results here, but still had not seen that Anora won Best Picture, which I now, obviously, know]
I’m seeing now that she won [Best Actress], so you’ll just have to take my word that she’d have been my pick anyway, even only halfway through my watch, when I attempted (unsuccessfully) to switch over to the Oscars.
Excellent, congratulations to her, that’s the best-possible news to see as I write this.
Maybe the system works, sometimes.
What I didn’t get early on, because the story was so realistically and authentically told, is how funny Anora is. When I say Anora, I mean the film. The character, as we are told numerous times, prefers to go by Ani. That the film implicitly still calls her Anora, through its titling, is a funny flourish in itself.
The script does its work helping Ani be likable, too. She’s about to be thrown into quite a situation, and we need to stay with her, even as she does some not-super-likable shit.
That’s inevitable.
All we need, as an audience, is a hook, a reason to know she’s worth rooting for, and Madison imbues Ani with vulnerability and wit that shine off the screen.
[editor’s note: you just kind of have to take my word that I would have said all this same stuff before knowing the results, and I give you my word, I would have]
Boy, this film is unafraid to tackle sex, and I applaud it for that. It did not make for an easy watch in my shared workspace, but that’s on me.
It’s an interesting pairing with The Substance, paired insofar as they’re from the same year. Whereas The Substance’s Morgan Qualley workout sequences were lampooning pornography and satirically underscoring how much Sex Sells permeates every aspect of media, the sex in Anora was grounded and real as it (forgive me) comes.
I’ve got receipts
I absolutely fell in love with Ani as the film progressed.
Often (as with Emilia Pérez or The Brutalist or especially Zack Snyder’s Justice League), multiday watches signal that I struggled to watch the movie.
I don’t punish myself doing this stuff. If a movie has worn out its welcome, I fuck off to smoke a joint or vape and check social media or whatever, and return back to the material after that, or don’t. And I repeat, as necessary, until I’ve watched the whole thing.
I’ve only ever given up once and still written a review (The Apprentice).
It just takes however long it takes, and I don’t take work home with me, typically.
Anora spilled out over three days not because it wasn’t an absolute blast (it was), but because it highlighted a flaw in my system, which is that my shared-workspace approach to reviewing and writing really lets me down when the material is overtly sexual or ‘explicit’ (a dumb word only used by dumb people, usually to justify doing something dumb like censoring something).
This movie’s approach to gender politics/dynamics was unflinching and frank, and I think it served the story well, but hoo boy, did it make for a handful of high-octane games of chicken in my office, wherein I was like, ‘how long can there be tits on the screen… good lord … hm, it would actually arguably look worse if I were to fast-forward it, I’ll just ignore it until… hm, actually, I’ve been thinking this whole time and there’s still tits on the screen and it’s actually worse now, because now there’s more tits and holy christ I’m realizing I’ve just been broadcasting tits — and frankly a lot more — to everyone in my office for, like, a solid minute of real time.’
It’s not a perfect system, I’ll concede that.
Nor is Anora a perfect film. There are none.
But some films are so good, they might as well be perfect, and sometimes one of those films is wholly predicated on one performer and performance, and sometimes she absolutely fucking kills it for you, and your movie’s a success because she’s so good.
That’s what’s happened with Anora and Mikey Madison. And I think as we trek through my experience watching Anora in real time, we’ll see that I have the receipts to say that I also called this one (plus Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain, others) or would have, if I hadn’t had to finish my viewing as the Oscars were actually happening.
That’s not to say that this movie isn’t any good outside of Madison’s next-level performance.
It’s really solid. It feels authentic and real, and the rest of the writing and performances grounds the world that Ani moves in, making her all the funnier and more charming.
Setup and payoff. This film is quality through and through, so the setup of her character and world pays off in getting to see Ani be true to who we know her to be, even in extraordinary circumstances.
It’s so satisfying.
As Ani packs for and leaves for a week-long trip, she has this brief exchange with her roommate (they’re not friends) on her way out the door.
It’s true to the relationship we’ve already known them to have, and we the audience already know how long her trip is going to be, so we, like Ani, have no tolerance for anyone who isn’t up to speed, certainly not for their derision and ignorance.
We’re walkin’ here!
I thought the yelling scenes I referenced were particularly interesting, as paid thugs that work for Vanya’s dad come into the dad’s mansion, with his permission and blessing, investigating whether or not he has really married a hooker (a word the film uses, and to which Ani rightly takes great offense), and Vanya attempts and fails to boss them around.
Often, films stumble in giving too much information, in repeating themselves so that we can see a new character react to information we, the audience, are already privy to.
Anora’s script smartly gives Ani — who speaks and understands Russian, but prefers to communicate in English, and it quickly becomes clear why — more information than the audience in these fights, meaning we’re looking to her for context about how bad this actually is.
It’s really effective filmmaking, and it’s typical of Anora, which was fun and compelling from the start, but which also accelerated deftly into a satisfying — forgive me — climax.
And what a climax!
My point in saying ‘we’re walkin’ here,’ is that Ani’s energy and verve were infectious, and even more than I thought, given its Best Picture win.
[editor’s note: and now we’re all caught up; the timelines converge. in some ways this review was like a Chris Nolan film. We’re pretty close. I call him Chris, nbd]
Well, congratulations to everyone involved, and especially Mikey Madison because — and no cap, you saw the receipts — I knew it way before AMPAS announced it.
