After Dark: Anora
Added 2024-11-07 17:00:09 +0000 UTCThe Filmcast: After Dark is the bonus show where we talk about a variety of random topics that didn't make it into the main podcast - including your questions and what's going on in our lives.
In this episode, Dave, Jeff, and Devindra discuss Sean Baker's latest film, Anora.
PATRONS: You can get this audio in your podcast app by going to patreon.com/filmpodcast, going to the "My Member
Comments
The comparison to Michael Clayton and the goons is so funny. Michael is much, much more competent than these dipshits 😀
Mountain of Conflict
2024-11-13 12:58:16 +0000 UTCShe's allegedly a 23-year old who's probably been doing this since she turned 21. I forgive the movie that she might have no clue. Her mom is far away and her dad not mentioned.
Mountain of Conflict
2024-11-13 12:55:58 +0000 UTCYes, but she did fall in "love" over time. Maybe.
Mountain of Conflict
2024-11-13 11:02:48 +0000 UTCMost marriages do not end in divorce. That’s a very old statistic. But most divorces are initiated by women. Just a little FYI.
Cece
2024-11-12 18:49:11 +0000 UTCDear Devindra, Started The Diplomat. It's AWESOME. Yours Sincerely Matt
A & M Mangold
2024-11-12 02:06:03 +0000 UTCThis is a VERY difficult listen to post-US-election... You can hear such playful, hopeful chatter
Simon Columb
2024-11-11 18:22:20 +0000 UTCDave, did you forget that Anora is being paid for spending the week with him… their relationship has always been transactional and their marriage is scam. He’s doing it to rebel against his family and he doesn’t want to move back to Russia, he somehow thinks by marrying Anora that we will stay in the US . Anora wants to leave her life as a stripper/sex worker and she starts to do that when she quits her job. So that is why I totally agree with Jeff with their marriage always being a sham and was never going to last.
Nick Esqu
2024-11-10 18:22:14 +0000 UTCSpoiler alert The election went as wrong as it could have. Sorry guys. I hate that this is our reality now.
Olivia Oliver
2024-11-10 16:38:11 +0000 UTCI haven't seen the movie, but the description of "Anora" sounds very much like a modern version of "Breakfast at Tiffany's". I was surprised the comparison never came up (unless I missed it).
Kryten
2024-11-09 01:05:30 +0000 UTCYour mention of time travel reminded me of how I was thinking about the movie Back to the Future yesterday, and how in that movie when Marty McFly accidentally travels back in time 30 years, his whole worry is that he will be stuck there and won't be able to get, well, back to the future. If I found myself inadvertently having traveled back in time to the early 90s, the first thing I'd do is destroy the time machine to ensure I was stuck there and could hopefully just live out the rest of my days before ever reaching this time period to find out what's going to happen next.
Stranger2Reality
2024-11-08 20:01:36 +0000 UTCPersonally I thought this ending reeked of typical "sex worker doesn't know how to process non-transactional relationships" which is a trope I'm so tired of. Sex workers can and do have "normal" or "safe" relationships, and I'm sick of seeing them portrayed as damaged characters who harbor this inescapable fear within them. I'm conflicted because I thought Red Rocket was so averse to stereotypes that maybe I'm missing something here.
Ryan Goodwin
2024-11-08 08:12:37 +0000 UTCThis is heartbreaking. Hearing the joy in your voices knowing what is going to happen….
Nicolas Zika
2024-11-08 07:46:56 +0000 UTCSo this is what time travel feels like. Huh.
Shane Driscoll
2024-11-08 03:17:47 +0000 UTCCame on to listen to your discussion of the election, and oh man. The heartbreaking joy of the past when what could be seemed finally possible. Sending y’all big commiserations and motherf🤬 rs💔✨
Kess Broekman-Dattner
2024-11-08 01:52:26 +0000 UTCAmerica is Anora.
Seth Offenberger
2024-11-07 23:51:39 +0000 UTCAt the theatre where I saw ANORA, the movie’s poster stated at the top: “A love story from Sean Baker.” I have to wonder if this was an ironic, misleading “joke” concocted by Neon’s marketing people, or something that Sean Baker actually approved. (The better to make the ending all the more subject to debate and interpretation.) I’ll definitely see ANORA a second time. And pertaining to post-election gloom, I keep thinking of the line from Samuel Beckett: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
CDMatthew
2024-11-07 23:43:55 +0000 UTCYour comment here—in addition to your full review from Cannes—reinforces my need to see ANORA a second time.
CDMatthew
2024-11-07 23:22:42 +0000 UTCFirst off I want to say that it’s gutting knowing the result of the election to hear you guys chat normally. Genuinely fucking painful to listen to. I have a different read on the ending of ‘Anora’. I think Jeff’s read is a layer to it, but what initiates the intimacy is Igor revealing the ring to Anora. I read Anora proceeding to have sex with Igor as a transactional response in the way that her profession has led her to respond to intimacy as transactional and an exchange for something. He was attempting to show kindness and compassion, but she rarely, if ever, is at the receiving end of kindness and compassion. I don’t think she felt anything for Igor and her sobbing uncontrollably is waking from the dream back to her reality.
Spencer Henderson
2024-11-07 20:10:49 +0000 UTCSolidarity. ✊🏼
Reynaldo K. Cruz
2024-11-07 18:34:59 +0000 UTCSPOILERS My read on the ending changed dramatically on second viewing. My first time, I had what seems like Dave’s reading — or what I might call the “Chalamet during the credits of Call Me By Your Name” ending. An outpouring of emotion that sort of summarizes the rollercoaster she has been through. The second time around, though, I see it as quite a bit darker. And the key to understanding it is a “joke” that on first watch fell pretty flat a few scenes earlier: Ani’s extended badgering about why Igor didn’t sexually assault her, concluding that he would have if he felt like he could. (I’m paraphrasing because the actual text is pretty NSFW). To me though, that scene is crucial in teeing up the ending. Because if you watch their dynamic in the car, everything shifts when she refuses to kiss him. (Lap dance rules: she calls the shots.) He vigorously pulls her towards him, she pulls away, he pulls harder in a way that is actually quite aggressive. In that moment, the love story has shifted. Igor, like everyone else in her life, will assert control over her body if he feels like he has earned it. His limits are further than most other characters, but they still exist. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it an assault, but I do think it is meant to be read as a micro version of that macro trauma she is processing. Not just “I need real love” but “I need real love and you, too, are just another entitled consumer.” In other words, the love story that Jeff was afraid of happening (“It was him the whole time!”) is what Baker is dangling in front of us in the last ~10 minutes — a cinematic fantasy as unreal as the ending of Florida Project or Red Rocket. Then reality comes crashing in. The “diamond in the rough” nice guy who comes swooping in at the end is as much of an illusion as the Richard Gere-esque playboy who can offer her a life raft. Sit with that discomfort as the credits roll.
Stephen David Miller
2024-11-07 18:16:04 +0000 UTCI had to stop listening. The hope and optimism in your voices is too heartbreaking.
Ryan Crisp
2024-11-07 18:12:11 +0000 UTC10 seconds in: wow, the guys seem to be taking it well. 30 seconds in: ………………….oh. oh no.
Gareth
2024-11-07 17:45:27 +0000 UTCJeff’s interpretation is 100% on the money. Ani breaking down only (or mainly) because of the trauma and chaos of the last week crashing into her is so much less complex and interesting. In that moment her perception of her entire world is dismantled and she cannot comprehend it. I don’t know if everyone in my (large and very full) theater intellectually understood what was going on, but it certainly worked for them emotionally - it was a magnificent experience to feel all the air sucked out of the room. The audience sat in hushed silence as the credits rolled and then broke out into applause.
Cameron Stewart
2024-11-07 17:39:26 +0000 UTCWhat a weird relic of the Before-times...
Mel
2024-11-07 17:35:23 +0000 UTCSo true ahhhhh
hexum311add
2024-11-07 17:14:34 +0000 UTCYou can hear the cautious optimism in their voices we all had... 😑🔫
Outlandish Beats
2024-11-07 17:14:06 +0000 UTCIf only yall had know
hexum311add
2024-11-07 17:08:20 +0000 UTC
