ANORA PROSE

this piece will explore themes and bounds of the film anora (2024). consider this your spoiler alert.

it’s wednesday night. the middle of week. the end of february. i eat what’s left of the chinese delivery in the fridge, ordered on monday. day three of two for one mapo tofu and scallion pancakes. fucking yum.

finally a free night. no workshops, no mics, no dates. just a moment to catch a film that’s been buzzing in my ear and cleaned up at the oscars. i feel small, bluey bluey, blah blah boo. radical exhaustion imbues the air of a long winter yawn. longer nights, shortest day. grey universe, sun, not sun. not rain either, not even an above i recognize. haze. the unconscious comes and goes, swinging. left brain, right brain.

when calm comes, it feels hard to trust. it’s new york. like an alaskan summer sky. how long will you live above?

i search the inter webs, in search of an anora to stream, free. sue me. call me cheap. call me too tired and lazy to rig together some kind of bootleg copy or go to theatre. i am. i barf up the four ninety nine needed to rent anora on apple tv. i pay. it plays.

pay to play. a metaphor, a microcosm, a consideration of the realities we’re dancing in.

now, it wasn’t as much to say the film was really good as i am just an obsessed kind of person. two things can be true. logic would lead me to this conclusion:

anora is really good. and i am really quite obsessed. this time with anora.

why?

the film itself is manic depressive, fulfilled by a borderline quality. opium—esque, by nature; addictive, necessary, like water. graciously living somewhere between reality and candy land sex fiction utopia, ponderosa.

the movie watches like a high end art porno, mixed with grand theft auto action; the bling ring but make it mikey madison in herve leger, ferociously surviving. funny. powerful. hurting. hungry. single, in love and rage. resigned and preserved. ambivalent and reluctantly graceful. married, isolated, abused, assaulted, depleted and trafficked across brighton beach, in search of the boy who promised her happy. in search of a sunset called fantasy. the promise of ever after, really a promise of nothing more than the week. the day. the night. no promise of ambush, no promise of acceptance either.

i know ani. bated, hooked. and at point in time, the data will show she was in love with the game for the empty promise she could believe in, for a time. the love of the game before she knew it to be such, a game. there’s a moment of feeling meant for it. ever so brief, ever so silent.

it was clear that both vanya and ani desired a love they could not afford nor safe keep, though wanted such flame desperately despite. the drug of youth, reckless immortality, plus lack of impulse control was their crash and burn. both characters, are flawed and the relationship proves to be fragile from inception, despite grandiose, wild gestures of materialized love, and displays of heteronormative power; despite commitments made. to ani’s dismay. wounded heart on fire.

vanya. what would he be reborn as? his own brand and flavor, uncanny high and low. how many licks until i get to the center of the — toot — si — pop! a performance of his own. the character is a case of querying minds, art of his manner, the slick endlessness to him. he opens up the heart to fantasies beyond control, still forced yet to discover his fatal fallacy: unrealized privilege, power and young adult s—exploitation. the false utopia, disillusionment, coming of age, the seekers who don’t know where to look.

themes of anora: the impact and implication of media, status, and control in adolescent development, masculinity, feminism, wealth, apathy, neurodivergence, nihilism; where did it all leave us? intersecting along a periphery, warranting a full dissection for which there is not a cadaver large enough.

ani fights against internalizing her rage. she does not submit to seeing the situation as normal or regular. she doesn’t waiver that hate crimes are being committed against her, and she doesn’t internalize the abuse, in a way where we see her become enraged with herself. once she breaks the spell of illusion it is cathartic and clarifying as the viewer. there was release for me in her constant battle cry, vocal release and her practice of non-silence despite many attempts at silencing her. she lets it out, and keeps letting it out as the film plays on. ani never appears to waiver in personal faith, power, and knowing, despite being physically restrained and tortured at the very threat of her strength and weight. the experience of her disillusionment breaking apart, the emergence and development of self—trust is powerful. the cohesive narrative shines through, showing her own psychological resilience. some of these moments with ani feel so powerful and intimate, like we are in her brain during the pivotal moments of her life.

with sex work as the convention of vanya and anis meeting and basis for relationship, it’s hard to bifurcate what emotionality was real for ani in the dynamic, and what disillusionments became her truth as a result of his short-term companionship, wealth, abandonment and betrayal, and if it’s even worth discussing. as the viewer, vanya’s low capacity for serious emotional engagement feels challenging, watching him use strategies such as use money — a lot of money — to fulfill his personal and romantic interpersonal needs; an escape from his own challenges relationally and personally. it appears he uses this strategy as a way to avoid deeper intimacy maybe in part due to a complex mixture of childhood trauma, unrecognized developmental pathology, drug use, privilege, and fear.

the decision to have the end be aftercare is raw, stinging, and infuriatingly comforting. possibly the range of emotions ani feels as we watch her tremble in the arms of her admirer, equalizer, holder, watcher, silencer, and witness. we, as the audience are confronted with a multitude of feelings, a crescendo of emotion, crest of wave bending back, end of roller coaster crossing it’s last trick, trick, tick, tick, tock, tack, track, boom, sha—bloom di do… the audience is given a pure demonstration of the complexity of anora in the final scene. we see her outward expression of joy, pain, and mundane through the reflective direction time and time again.

sean baker is acupuncture for the cinematic soul, an irreverent being, sensitive human. a peek into the world, the life, that is but a dream of immediate now, radical layers of power and confusion. in marriage they say you learn about conflicts in the name of long-term resolution. the benign parts, busting. small glimmers into a world, a wink, a nod, a creep. a slight pull of curtain, hoist of blind, for those of who know but don’t, a peek into the hidden houses of brighton beach where the lights come on at night. maybe marriage is for those who want to learn that. and those who don’t want to learn that don’t get married.

by the time the film was all watched and re—runned, i’d seen the damn thing nine and a half times. the credits rolled in, then out, then it would go again. aside from getting my moneys worth — some intergenerational curse of ensuring value and worth of choice due to guilt of spend on anything joy related, i’m sure. i digress, i overrun —

the film was really compelling, at points keystone cop, hysterically ridiculous. at points, ridiculously painful. two thousand and two in two thousand twenty five, the new millennium, dressed up in new york night; cloaked in red, lit up under ground, endless love, indignant and feverish. a dream dying, but not yet dead.

when my virtual copy, this “rental,” as it were, (what a fucking scam) was called back to its dusty shelf, conceptually non—existent, totally conspired, beside the energy it sucks from the grid— i knew i’d seen enough.

that’s all for now. until then, here’s a poem i wrote about anora.

about ani.

done be done, real gone go. real gone wrong

done be do. even the go—go-er, gunslingers

son shall bleed —