Anora: Making Cinema Great Again
Brian McLoughlin
Yes, it’s a naff title. America may be or may not be great, may once have been great, mat have always been great, or never great, and cinema, if it is great, may have been great before Anora and Anora is a great film, in my opinion, and it’s all opinion, perspective, and Cicero said millions died to make Great Caesar great, same for Alexander the Great, and does great exist outside opinion, perspective?
Anora, on a deeper level, stripped of all its perfect scenes, its crazy shenanigans, its hilarious extravaganzas, is about a quest for intimacy. The word ‘stripped’ is appropriate because the film is about a stripper – correct term sex worker (or exotic dancer) – embarking on a Cinderella-like fairytale with no prince in sight.
The fairy godmother or ‘prince’ comes in the form of an extremely rich Russian oligarch’s 21-year-old son, Ivan, who takes such a shine to Anora in her working clothes that he buys her for a week and they jet off to Vegas with his gang for wild boozing, drugs and of course furious jumping.
The beautiful jewel gown is a wedding dress, complete with four-carat wedding wing – or is it an engagement ring? To misquote Lady Bracknell, spontaneous marriage is the way to go as it saves the price of the engagement ring, not that Ivan, the young man enamoured, is the slightest bit concerned about saving, for he lives a feckless life of vast, expense, massive luxury, in an enormous glass cathedral-like mansion in Brighton Beach, New York.
Trouble is, midnight comes, return to Brighton Bridge happens, and Ivan is unclothed as possessing nothing, for his dad owns all. And when dad hears about son’s carry-on, he and his formidable wife order their local henchmen to annul things, as the couple set out in their private airplane to retrieve their son.
From Russian without Love.
Sean Baker, the film’s director, makes films about people on the margins, on the periphery, in the gritty grease of life, and he’s brilliant at casting new and first time actors to play characters that are fully realised, vibrant, empathetic, often crazy, usually on the periphery, and the result is everything and everyone in Anora pops, including cinematography, sound, editing…
Played out in conflicted and chaotic scenes is the struggle of the have-nots and the incongruent situations they face in order to survive. It’s a timely film, for all the margins will soon be extinct for Donald Trump will make America great, which surely means rich.
Sean Baker along with Mikey Madison, who plays the titular Anora, expended a lot of effort connecting with sex workers to get an authentic feel for what happens in that world and the result is authentic cinema magic. It’s a wild ride, sensitive, entertaining, hilarious, crazy, moving, devastating, fronted by a brilliant central performance by Mikey Madison, who is pure cinema dynamite.
Anora, in my opinion, is dazzling. It’s difficult to describe what defines a great movie. One just feels it, perhaps feels the love, care, the film makers have for the community the film presents and beyond that, for its audience, transmitted through the screen to produce a kind of rare intimacy. An instant classic and my tip for the 2025 Best Picture Oscar.
But will Donald Trump like it?
Brian McLoughlin is a member of Inklings Writing Group, who meet on Tuesdays 11am in Annebrook House Hotel. Visitors are welcome to come and make their writing great again.