ANORA (2024) - 10/18/2024
Mikey Madison for Heisman
The long awaited, discussed, and anticipated Sean Baker film Anora is finally making its rounds and theatrical release around the country and it is living up to its fame. The Palme d’Or winner this past Cannes has gotten a lot of notoriety over its festival run for being a darker - or at least much more naked - Pretty Woman. Baker does an incredible job (as he does with all of his previous films) exploring and shining light on the life and times of sex workers. One thing that is truly surprising to me is that even though all of his films are branded as indie darlings and seem like they might have that traditional artsy, dryness that comes with a lot of independent features, they never do. They always grab your attention and can be truly funny and gripping the entire time, whether it’s the day in the life of a trans sex worker, following daily life in a Florida motel, watching a shitty porn star return home, or a stripper marrying a rich Russian, every film is wildly entertaining and humanizing. But the real star of this show is not Baker, but Mikey Madison.
If you’ve heard anything about this film, it’s probably the correct praise heaped upon Madison for her performance. It’s the type that actors love because it’s daring and tough and brave - but in a different way. She absolutely sends it with the stripper persona, having no qualms baring it all in front of the camera time and time again - whether it’s for her professional work or for her intimate life. Not unlike Demi or Margaret in The Substance, I’m sure voters in the academy will eat this performance up. She physically nails the role both in performance on stage and with customers1, as well as being the tough bitch outside of her job. Madison is a fascinating and exciting persona to watch the entire time as she navigates this situation she gets put in and, later, is trying to constantly escape.
Madison is the glue for this film, which makes sense seeing that she is the titular character, but she is beguiling throughout. Scenes that would traditionally drag on too long in the wrong hands get gracefully extended through her incredible work. This is incredible in itself because any time you feel like the scene might cut away, you don’t want it to because you want to see how Madison will react to what’s at hand.
I understand there are a lot of films left that I haven’t seen and that the acting categories seem to be really up in the air this year, but Madison in Anora is the one I want to win. We know that actors love to play dress up and pretend, which is why many acting Oscars are handed out to those embodying an actual person, but I truly think that the harder thing to do is convince people that a made up fictional character is real. Sure, it’s fun to look at someone and go, “Wow they really look like Winston Churchill or Judy Garland” but there is already precedent for how those people act, and at some point you are just mimicking2. Convincing people that this wholly new, made up person exists is a completely different skill set that is much more impressive.
As I said earlier, Madison does an incredible job convincing you through every little tick and foible that she is an actual stripper/sex worker from south Brooklyn. She has the physicality, the personality, and the attitude that makes all those things work and that so many others have failed at. She also has this incredible magnitude that keeps you glued to her on the screen for the nearly two and a half hours this film runs on. And on top of it all, she makes you believe that this woman who has been societally beat down, is more than just a piece of meat. At the end of the day, she is just a human, with feelings, trying to make things work.
The pole dancing incredible, she sells her performances both lap dancing and in Ivan’s house. She’s just absolutely nails being a stripper.
For this reason, I believe we should have separate acting Oscars like we do for adapted and original screenplay.