Anora

Bro you are NOT Tyler, The Creator's 2019 neo-soul, electronic-pop masterpiece 😭😭 There's like three distinct portions of this movie, which are so starkly different, but I kinda see the vision. The first part, probably around 45-50 minutes, is spent on this Frank Ocean Super Rich Kids kind of journey, full of bright lights, quick cuts, exorbitant, excessive amounts of money, drugs, etc. It almost gets to be a bit repetitive, but I understand why it's like this. Then the movie evolves into this meandering, comedic, wild goose chase as Anora and the Russians go through multiple misadventures on their search for Ivan. This, for me, is where it got so fun. I think part of the reason this shift worked is that with the hedonistic bliss that Anora reaches in the first 45, I was expecting a dramatic crash. So when these Russians show up as bumbling idiots, the subversion makes it that much funnier. Then, I think the last 30-40 minutes try to bring the first and the second portion together, but don't execute it that well. Throughout the "Where's Waldo" section, there are these breaks from the screaming and drunkenness and fights and parking tickets where Anora tries to get through to Ivan. The implicit point Baker tries to make here is that no matter how loud Anora shouts or how much she fights, her position as a sex worker means she will never get the respect she rightfully deserves. However! The reason this ending doesn't really tie things together that well is that we don't get enough out of Anora. Baker tries to invoke a melancholic feeling under the comedic surface, but we're never explicitly sure if Anora wants this marriage because she's actually in love with Ivan or because she wants that lavish lifestyle. And then, Igor seems like Baker's "Good Guy™" insert, so their conversation at the end just falls flat. For a movie called Anora, it's really more a shift between Ivan and Igor's perspectives of her, rather than her motivations and desires. Despite the sorta flat ending, I did really enjoy this. This is my official petition to get Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov in more movies cause they were phenomenal.