Nothing draws crowds like a winner. Images’ Saturday evening showing of Anora — which took home five Oscars this year, including best picture — was a hot ticket for first-years, octogenarians, and everyone in between. The crowd was not ready for what was coming. From its very first scene, the film lets rip a no-holds-barred depiction of strip clubs, excessive drug use, and wanton cruelty.
Anora opens with the film’s titular protagonist, nicknamed Ani, working a shift at a dark, smoky strip club. Her sultry beauty and bilingual skills lead her to Vanya, the unruly son of a Russian oligarch. The two begin a tumultuous relationship built on a tower of lies that quickly falls apart.
The film concludes with one of Vanya’s henchmen, Igor — another pawn at the hand of the family — driving Ani back to her house to pick up the pieces of her fractured life. After she and Igor engage in a cold, angry exchange and sexual encounter, the final shot closes on Ani crying into Igor’s chest as the eerie, diegetic sound of a car engine and windshield wipers repeats in the background.
Comparing the relationships between both Ani and her suitors, as well as the two men themselves, Kim, who specializes in Russian and Soviet cinema, pointed to the surprising humanity of the scene. “[Ani’s] body was not a commodity at that time, so they bonded,” she said.
This final scene also had a broader importance for the message of the film. “It’s a kind of class solidarity ending because they call [Igor] a gopnik several times,” Kim said. “[A Gopnik] is a working/criminal class in Russia … So he is perceived as this. And they understand each other at that time.”
In addition to modeling Igor’s character off an archetype of a low-class Russian criminal, Kim said that the film invokes a stereotype of Russian excess. “The kind of unhinged, untempered [person], that kind of …spontaneity of the characters,” Kim said. Vanya and his Russian-American friends fully embody this stereotype, Kim explained, leading hedonistic lives of frequent drinking and extravagance.
“[The film] is really playing into stereotypes rather than portraying Russians,” Professor Kim said. “I don’t think it’s a Russian film.”
“For an American filmmaker to have this play on stereotypes, that’s problematic, because it reinforces the stereotypes about Russian national culture, be it good or bad or a kind of exotic,” Kim continued.
Despite critical acclaim for Anora’s stars at its premiere, concerns have arisen about some of the actors’ connections to the Kremlin. On Feb.27, an op-ed by novelist and screenwriter Michael Idov published in the New York Times argued against the idea of Anora “an apolitical film.”
The Russian government has claimed Anora as distinctly Russian, touting its success as beneficial for the country’s visibility on the world stage. This nationalism has fueled controversy surrounding the film. “Filmmakers and cultural figures from Ukraine and Georgia would say this is outrageous — How could this film win [the Oscar]” Kim said.
She does not, however, think that the current war defines the scope of the film. “I totally understand their position, but I still think that [the film’s director] Sean Baker was not interested in that part of the [Russia-Ukraine] conflict.”
Though the film has Russian elements, characters, cast members, and culture, these aspects should not hide its message, she said. According to Kim, however, Baker’s interest in examining classism has been largely ignored. “It could be any stereotypical oligarch from another culture,” she said. “The point of the film is a class struggle, and to show this disparity between the two [groups].”
