Spoilers for the end of Anora.

Sean Bakers Anora is like Beautiful woman at the hurried pace of Uncut gemstones – until the end.

The final moments of the film are silent, which is in direct contrast to the chaotic journey Ani (Mikey Madison) has just taken. After a whirlwind marriage to a wealthy client and son of a Russian oligarch (Vanya, played by Mark Eydelshteyn), she has spent the entire runtime of the film chasing her new husband all over New York City with the oligarch’s employees , and flew to Vegas to settle the case. a marriage forced by Vanya’s parents, before ending up in an accomplice’s beat-up car on the way home to her apartment.

Parked outside Ani’s apartment, Igor (said henchman, played by Yura Borisov) gives Ani the ill-fated wedding ring that the family forced her to give up. Ani climbs on top of him and they start having sex in the front seat, but Ani refuses to let Igor kiss her. Instead she bursts into tears. They say nothing during this exchange and the film ends.

Sean Baker leaves Anora‘S ending with interpretation.

Yura Borisov as Igor
Credit: NEON

AnoraWriter and director Sean Baker told Mashable that the way he wrote the ending left it up to the audience’s interpretation — so much so that he didn’t want to share his thoughts.

“I’m afraid to express my opinion on it in any way because it takes away from… what my intention was with the ending,” Baker said in an interview with Mashable.

“We (Madison and I) felt that it would always be a disservice to Ani to discuss this publicly,” he continued. Ani’s mentality at the end of the film is not explained. There is no music to manipulate the audience, no dialogue, no epilogue, and that is on purpose.

What Baker did say was how the ending came about. “I need to know if I have a solid ending before I write a screenplay,” he said of his process, and he knew early on that the main character and one of her captors would be drawn to each other.

“We recently looked back at our first draft, and it’s pretty much a departure from what we have in the final film.” The only difference? The last shot was originally just small talk. Baker and the actors decided to scrap that during rehearsals.

“It just took away the moment,” Baker explained. “And then we realized, especially Mikey and I, I think, that this was one of the first times that she actually interacted with someone else in the film and was heard. And we thought it would be much more interesting if that was a non- movie would be.” -verbal communication, and so we took all the dialogue out of that last shot.”

Sex workers are mixed Anoras end.

Credit: NEON

Since Baker has talked about consulting sex workers in developing the script, we decided to reach out to some people with real-world experience for their thoughts on whether or not Anora sounded true to them.

“I thought it was wonderful,” says Kaytlin Bailey, host of The oldest professional podcast And founder and director of non-profit media organization Old Pros, about the silence at the end of Anora. (Bailey, who has no ties to the film, recently saw and enjoyed the film.) “I love that he allows the viewer to fill in that space.”

“She talks, advocates for herself – sometimes she screams – and argues the whole movie, and they (Ani and Igor) don’t need any of that,” said Bailey, who is currently on tour. Whore’s Eye Viewa show about the history of sex work.

When Ani and Igor first meet, he literally holds her down during the scene at the family’s home. He is also the only man who realizes what she is capable of. But in the final scene, Igor is able to make room for Ani for the first time, Bailey said.

“When he stands still and allows her to come to him in this deep, very vulnerable moment of exhausted need, it’s almost like an extension of the space that you could see throughout the film that he wanted for her hold on,” Bailey said. continued. Igor works for this ‘twisted family’ and does twisted things for them – but at that moment he can finally be there for Ani.

Ani can only be so vulnerable in that moment because Igor holds that space for her, said Bailey, who believes this final scene makes the entire film.

Writer and stripper Reese Piper (who has written for Mashable) thought differently Anora. Ani’s lack of backstory made it hard for Piper to believe how quickly and hard she fell for the fantasy of marrying Vanya. What also kept Piper from suspending his disbelief was Ani’s lack of professional personality.

“She performs under her real name, and at no point do we see the mask she wears to make money,” Piper told Mashable via email. “Some dancers perform as themselves, or as a version of themselves, but our job is always to fake it or find something attractive about customers that we might not have felt necessary without money. Ani goes to his house for paid sex, but at what point does she stop working?”

Piper (who is also not involved in the making of Anora) wasn’t sure what Baker was trying to portray in the final scene. “Was (Ani), in an attempt to hide from her pain, reach for her sexualized self (perhaps her mask) and then collapse as Igor continued to reach for intimacy?”

If so, the ending fell flat for Piper. “We never saw her mask. We never saw stripping as something she was hiding,” she said.

The film’s ending for Ani is indeed internal, but the viewer is unaware of her inner thoughts – and this landed for some, but not for others. As Baker told Mashable, “It really comes down to the individual audience member getting what they want out of it.”

Anora is in theaters now.