Anora (Sean Baker, October 18, 2024) Movie • Page 13

As good as Anora is it would have been much funnier and also much more annoying to read thinkpieces about if it had been Red Rocket.

 

Lol that scene with Igor is incredible tho

 

Almost like different movies require different types of screenwriting to fit the needs of the story. Both A Real Pain and Anora have fantastic scripts

 

People who spend that much effort on disliking art and trying to convince other people to share their disdain is just grating and annoying. A total byproduct of Twitter and the desperation to start discourse. Like, you’re allowed to hate it but whatever happened to “don’t yuck my yum”?

 

Lmfao these people are so unserious

 

People just say anything with zero knowledge of what they are talking about

 

Why are people mad about Anora? Who are these people?

 

The idea that Anora glamorizes sex work is insane to me. I have to believe that these people just haven’t seen the movie.

 

Overly online 20 year olds

 

A lot of people just have poor media literacy. They see something happening, so it must be glorifying it.

I’ve seen people say the movie glorifies Russian oligarchs. They somehow don’t understand that they all come across as either awful, sad, or incredibly shallow by the end of the film. I don’t know how you end this movie and go, wow, that looks like a great life, can’t believe they are glorifying that life. But hey, they show them on screen and we see the son taking advantage of the money and power, so all must be good. Can’t possibly be being used to point to something else.

 

Also most directors are perverted freaks with questionable beliefs lol

 

This is why I hate the Oscars more than I feel ambivalent about them, lol. Any time a movie I love either wins or is “snubbed,” the conversations around it almost always get dumber (and never improve in any way).

 

To the "Sean Baker has shitty politics though" point people are making. Steven Spielberg is a zionist, I still love Jurassic Park. Quentin Tarantino is a creep, I still love Kill Bill.

 

As far as I can tell, we only know Sean liked some tweets and follows some questionable accounts, but there has never been any confirmation on his actual political views. That’s the thing; people can speculate all they want, but that’s all it is—speculation. Really fucking silly if you think about it when there are actual cases that are way more egregious and worth peoples’ outrage.

 

This is what Oscar season breeds. It is film vs. film. They took an awkward paternalistic scene in Boyhood and called it racist.

 

That's the thing, though. It's so baffling when you consider his films.

 

I think the actual most important distinctions this movie has are “my favorite heterosexual movie of 2024” & “indirectly why I finally got around to Vampyros Lesbos.”

 

Speaking of Vampyros Lesbos, I mentioned during my engagement of that film in this thread that a cool writer & podcaster, Sara Century, had a lesbian vampire zine in the works. Well, if anyone here is cool enough to give a shit, preorders for it (in print or digital) are currently open:

The other zine she has in her Gumroad that’s currently out is about the Scream franchise, which isn’t something I’ve ever gotten into. But, maybe someone here would care?

(This should probably be a horror thread post, but I don’t really post there. And, this is more interesting imo than whatever boring twitter randos’ bad Anora takes in the wake of those dang awards, lol.)

 

No, it’s a good scene. Ani is upset at the whole situation and trying to antagonize Igor just by virtue of him being the closest person to her in that moment. Igor conveys his maturity by not being bothered by it and flatly saying she’s obviously wrong. She’s looking for a fight and he doesn’t give it to her. This kind of scene is basically a staple of Baker’s films, though usually both people are extremely immature and it descends into chaos

Honestly a much better example of showing vs. telling than that other scene, which is just an exposition dump explaining the movie to the audience

 

Def agree with your last point. As much as I enjoyed A Real Pain, that scene basically spells out the entire thrust of the film to the viewers. Even though it’s technically “more” in terms of actual text on the page, it’s lazier writing and trusts the audience less.

 

You’re right, and good analysis.

I was more speaking to the crassness and awkwardness of the interaction, which both bothered me in the moment as a viewer despite the deeper underlying meaning, and also feels immature and antagonistic separated from the rest of the film.

basically if you want to pull a page from the screenplay to make a point that it’s bad, that’s the page. But one page doesn’t make a bad screenplay, especially when the moment works in the overall film despite how raw and strange it feels isolated.

 

I don’t blame writers who don’t trust their audience. A lot of people don’t comprehend art with any nuance.

 

If Baker is a conservative I just assumed he is like a Taylor Sheridan hollywood libertarian type. An economic conservative libertarian who is inexplicably woke on certain niche social issues (in Sheridan's case indigenous women), but has shitty opinions on a bunch of other social issues.

 

This is probably going to open a wider discussion but as a writer, you shouldn’t be thinking of the audience. You should be thinking of the creation.