I Rewatched Anora and This is My Update
1 I Rewatched Anora
Anyways, I rewatched it because I saw the link and I feel like my first review wasn't fair. I've been seeing some more discourse on x as well (I kind of binge x everyday, but that's another story...) about how people think Anora doesn't present Ani with "interiority" and it's like people expect her to stop in the middle of the movie and start explaining about her life, as if she needed to explain.
Aside from the memes of Anora walking to Ivan's house in the blue dress, and her dancing in Ivan's mansion in the goth-girl outfit, I was also seeing some more controversy around the movie lately because apparently she didn't choose to have an "intimacy coordinator"? Which I didn't even know was a thing. But apparently people were saying it was unsafe and scummy of the director, which I don't even know where to begin with because I have no idea what an intimacy coordinator is. Anyways...
Anyways so I decided to rewatch the movie. I felt like I didn't give it the proper attention it deserved the first time around. It might also be kind of like y'all with Luigi Mangione, I felt pressured into giving him the tea chile...
2 Overall, first of all...
First of all, I really enjoyed the movie, now that I actually watched the entire thing...Again, I fell in and out of sleep for basically the entire second half of the movie half out of exhaustion and half out of trauma, but I felt like the last two scenes of the movie were the most key scenes of the movie. It really makes you feel differently about the whole movie actually seeing it (lol) and it gives you more perspective on the characters.
I also felt like I was unfair when talking about the sexiness of the movie in my initial viewing/blogpost. I think I said the nudity and sex was "gratuitous", given the nature of Ani's profession and the amount of sex scenes that were in the first act of the movie. I feel like I was unfair. First off, most of the sex is in the first third of the movie, and I feel like it is meant to be an assault on the senses of the viewer. And the last sex scene, between Ani and Igor...oof. That was like a punch in the gut, as I think I may have intuited that I missed, and I really loved that scene so much. I feel like I want to talk about Igor more later.
Overall, I think it's really unfair to judge the movie based on the first half/first third of the movie. I could even feel it watching it this time around, but I feel like the first part of the movie was meant to be like a euphoric high and like an assault for the viewers, which represents the sort of mania that Ani and Ivan were probably mutually going through. It also represents the immature feeling of their "love", in contrast to the more mature scenes between Igor and Ani towards the end. The contrast between the two parts of the movie was very drastic, though the pacing of the movie did not fall off towards the end, either. I felt that the pacing of the movie stayed pretty consistently throughout the movie.
3 My Conspiracy Theory
I feel like this movie was a great example of, the visuality and visual metaphors that are present in films communicate stories and underlying meanings that I, as a (self-diagnosed) schizoid tend to see said underlying meanings in, that just isn't exactly the same in like books or textual media.
What I mean by this, is, I feel like while the Ani gets married to Ivan in the movie by a technicality, I feel that the true couple at the center of the film is Ani and Igor. I feel like they have a reverse marriage, in which their marriage gets consummated before the actual "marriage". (I also love how their relationship is based on Igor pacifying and consoling her, the dynamic of the fierce woman and the calm man [even if some modern woke-ists may profess this as somewhat problematic, which I must admit I did feel in the first viewing] {one of the chief advantages to being a media with so much buzz as this one is that it warrants multiple viewings}).
I felt like in this scene, where Igor and Ani first meet, it is almost like they are having a fucked-up makeshift marriage. The way that they are framed in the shot ^ , with Ani gagged with a red scarf on the right side of the couch, and Igor sitting in a contemplative position on the left side of the couch, looks like a sort of fucked-up arranged marriage by fate. It is almost as if fate is bringing the two together in a fucked up way, and that Igor comes into Ani's life at this crucial point in which everything is so tumultuous. The symbolism of the red scarf also reminds me of the red veil that is placed over the bride's head in Chinese marriages.
So, my conspiracy theory is basically that Ani technically marries Ivan, but her true husband by proxy is Igor, who is much more of a true "man". And when she confronts Ivan later in the strip club later, and in front of the jet when they are boarding to go back to Las Vegas, it is more like she is talking to her son (Ivan), and her husband (Igor) is trying to get her to be calm. Ivan seems more like her son, a manchild, than her husband, and Igor seems like her true husband.
And I felt like throughout the movie, Igor was always framed in shots behind or next to Anora, and it seems like they're more like a couple than Ivan and Ani, who were more in whirlwind type chaotic shots through the movie. I don't know much about film theory, but I feel like there must be something there with those visuals...Igor always looked so contemplative.
4 Igor + the final scene
If you couldn't tell, I thought Igor (played by Yura Borisov) was sooooo tea. I thought he was really cute. (My non-oomf friend doesn't agree. He thought Ivan (played by Mark Eydelshteyn) was cuter). I thought he was so tea and cute, lol. He's just so quiet, calm, and sensitive. The way he puts his jacket around Ani's shoulders in the plane ride back to New York was so sweet and such a nice trope to use. I think Sean Baker (the director) said in an interview his most proud moment about the film was his casting. I kind of agree. The casting was kind of tea. And the guy he chose for Igor was so cute. Okay I feel like this entire character was just me saying Yura Borisov was cute in like five different sentences in like five different ways.
I loved the last two scenes. I didn't see either of these scenes at all when I watched it first, and now watching it, the second to last scene is my favorite scene, and the last scene is my second favorite. In the second to last scene, Igor and Ani are sort of hanging out on the couch in Ivan's mansion. The whole dynamic is very, Ani is sassy and not having it, and Igor is just sweet and not taking her jabs personally. It was very sweet, although Ani accused Igor of wanting to rape her because he had "rape eyes". There was also the moment where Igor said "touché" as "toosh" and Ani made fun of him for it. All in all, it was very post-coital and playful. AND Igor said he liked "Anora" better than "Ani". I would personally fold if someone talked that way to me.
The final scene, as I said, was like a punch in the gut. I dry-cried to it (like dry-heaving, but for crying). Basically, Igor reveals that he kept Ani's wedding ring, and again, it's like he's proposing to her in a fucked-up, alternate-universe, in-another-life kind of way. Like, in another world, under different circumstances, maybe they could have had a normal romance and love story and ended up together. I felt they were perfect for each other. Anora, feisty and fiery, Igor, calm and cool.
After Igor offers her the ring, Anora apparently feels that she must have sex with him in order to make up for it. But after Igor tries to kiss her, she slaps him across the face, stares at him for a moment, and then breaks down in sobs in his arms. There's a long shot of him just holding her in his arms. More romantic than anything Ivan ever did for her. And it WAS romantic. Idc what anyone says. And I think most people would agree. I wonder what happens to the two of them after the movie ends. Do they start dating? Do they never see each other again, and continue to yearn for each other? Either way, it's one of the most romantic things I've seen in a while, though it is quite sad and lowkey uncomfortable to watch. I'm kind of surprised my mom watched it all the way through the first time, tbh. That was strong of her.
5 Final Remarks
Do I have any final remarks that I want to say, you ask? I basically want to thank you if you did indeed read this far...I've found it really hard to find the time and space to write these past few weeks for whatever reason (*cough* I've been addicted to scrolling on X), and it means a lot for me to a) finish writing this blogpost and b) for you, whoever you are, to read this. So thanks! And if you haven't seen Anora yet, and this review didn't spoil the entire movie for you, I highly encourage you to watch it! And if you have seen it, feel free to comment or dm me to discuss the movie with me!! I would love that so so much. Anyways, till next time. I'm working on a short story, and I'm working on updating the next part of Red Hearts. Toosh!
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