This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Culture chat: ‘Anora’, the unlikely film leading the Oscar race’

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and this is our Friday chat show.

Today we are talking about Anora, the new comedy-drama from director Sean Baker about a savvy Brooklyn stripper named Anora, who meets a very rich young man at her Manhattan club one night. When he asks her to be his escort for the week while he’s visiting from Russia, she agrees and the whirlwind that ensues ends in a Vegas wedding. There’s a problem, though. His parents are Russian oligarchs, will not accept this marriage and send their Armenian lackeys out to annul it.

(‘ANORA’ TRAILER PLAYING)

Lilah Raptopoulos
Anora has received glowing reviews from critics. It received the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival and is being tipped as a frontrunner for the Oscars. And because it’s not the usual type of film to do that, today we’re gonna talk about it.

I’m Lilah in New York. And I’m a weary Armenian, henchman and scared of my Russian boss. Joining me from London, we’ve been driving around Coney Island and smashing up candy shops looking for him, it’s the FT’s film critic and a very special guest, Danny Leigh. Hi, Danny, welcome.

Danny Leigh
Hello Lilah, I wish my Russian was better. I feel like I’m letting the site down now.

Lilah Raptopoulos
It’s good. It’s good. Also in London, they’re on a private jet from Russia to squash your marriage. And yes, their suit is from the new collection. It’s the FT’s deputy news editor and friend of the show, India Ross. Welcome, India.

India Ross
Hello.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Thank you both for being here. Why don’t we start with just what we thought of the film, top line? Danny, you wrote a very positive review. You also interviewed Sean Baker for the FT just recently. Let’s start with you. What did you think?

Danny Leigh
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. So since both of those things happened, I actually went and saw the movie again, having been pretty smitten with the film the first time. You know, and I was smitten the second time too, you know, spoiler alert, I still really like it. But I watched it the first time and, you know, I took it very much as a comedy and I just got very swept away with the kind of propulsive, giddy, crazy comic energy that the film has. Particularly in the kind of middle section. And then the second time, I just felt deeply, deeply saddened watching it. And it felt much more melancholy. I think a lot of the film, I think really highly of it, but I do find it quite a chastening experience the second time around.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. That’s interesting. India, what about you?

India Ross
Yeah, I absolutely loved it. I was blown away by it. I’ve seen it once. I actually had planned to see it again next week. And that’s really interesting what you say, Danny, about the second experience, because it is such a kind of heady, sort of visceral experience watching this film. It really is just like thrilling. And I can see that once the dust settles on your experience of it, it might be quite different.

I’ve been a fan of Sean Baker since Tangerine, which was his sort of breakout film in 2015, and it’s just one of those things. It’s so satisfying to see someone who’s so gifted finally get the money to fulfil their creative vision. And sort of looking back, you can see . . . like he did amazing things with small budgets. He shot Tangerine on an iPhone. You can see in hindsight how his sort of wings were slightly clipped by financial constraints. And now this film is so lavish and it’s so kind of like bombastic and it’s just like really satisfying to see him be able to, like, fulfil the extent of his creative ability.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. OK. Now I’m excited to see it a second time.

Danny Leigh
You should. You should.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, because I really . . . I loved how fun it was to watch and how well it moved. Like it was one of the few movies that I’ve seen recently that just never felt slow. I never felt like, oh no, another plot point, like, we’re going somewhere else. It just kept moving. I thought the actors were really great. Mikey Madison played Anora and she was just, like, somehow funny and tragic and strong and weak. But I also really liked that, like, there were all these little practicalities in it.

And I’m curious what you think. Like they’re sort of out looking for this guy at some point in the movie in Brighton Beach in Coney Island. And all the things happen you know, it’s grand and bombastic, yeah, India. But also, like, when you’re out looking for a guy, you have to eat. So they go to a diner and like they . . . you have to park and you have to argue about parking. And I don’t know, I don’t know where to place that, but it felt sort of strangely real and refreshing in that way. I guess because I expected it to be some sort of like a crime thriller at that point and it wasn’t.

Danny Leigh
It’s real-life screwball, right? I mean, that energy, you know, as you say, I mean, that just propels the film along that sense of two things at once, that we’re seeing something which is at once kind of gritty and verité and feels almost documentary-ish in places, you know, and is also just completely off-the-charts outlandish. I mean, that’s where all the energy comes from.

India Ross
I think it’s also worth noting this film is really, really funny. It’s one of the funniest films I’ve seen in this . . . certainly this year and in the last couple of years. Like it’s absolutely kind of laugh-out-loud hilarious. And that was . . . and I think that’s been a theme throughout Baker’s work is he finds these extraordinary people that you just would never come across in real life. And it just makes them hilarious. And I think that a lot of the propulsion of the film is how funny it is, even though it’s obviously very sad as well.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Part of what I think was compelling about this film — at least the first time — is that like, it’s not really what you expect. I guess I thought it was going to be like stressful, like Uncut Gems. Or I thought it was going to be larger than life . . . like, what’s that one with J Lo as a stripper, the head of the strip club?

Danny Leigh
Oh, Hustlers.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Hustlers! Yeah. Something. I guess, like there are tropes that this movie could have been because it’s about the stripper who lives in, like, the depths of sort of Russian Brooklyn and is trying to make it and there’s a Russian oligarch and all this stuff. But then, like, it never really got stressful the way I expected or the bad guys were really not as bad as I really expected. And that’s part of what I really liked about it.

India Ross
I think it definitely avoids the kind of trappings of movies we’ve seen before that feature these kind of characters. Like, you know, we’ve talked previously about Pretty Woman as a sort of analogue for this. And like I think what I really like about Baker’s films is that . . . so there’s this kind of premise in like American society that a) a person can like pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they want to, and b) that you should. And if you don’t, you’re essentially like invisible.

And you know, the premise of Pretty Woman is that she, you know, the guy’s life is basically superior to hers. And this is kind of this aspiration that she has. And in order to achieve happiness, she has to kind of get there. Whereas this totally subverts that. And in fact, the kind of like aspirational life that her husband has turns out to be a) not even really his life, it’s his parents’ life. But also the parents are in an even dirtier business than she is. It’s strongly implied. And so this idea of like she needs to elevate herself in some way societally to achieve happiness is totally subverted. And in fact, like I mean, it doesn’t it does a really good job of it. It’s not patronising. It doesn’t sort of glamorise poverty or the work that she’s doing, but it certainly doesn’t say, you know, you need to be on this kind of aspirational path in order to like achieve. Yeah.

Danny Leigh
Yeah. Because I definitely . . . Yeah, I mean India is right. It’s, again, it’s a particularly Sean Baker way of doing things. You have this real sympathy for characters who are completely on the margins but without him feeling like he needs to show you the squalor, you know, which can so often, I mean, almost always tip in into being condescending and being exploitative, you know. And you always have that vision of even when it’s well-intentioned. You know, a filmmaker and a film crew descending on someone’s life, you know, and spotlighting the squalor. You know, and putting the camera into the most harrowing corners of somebody’s life. And Sean Baker doesn’t do that.

And he trusts, you know, I think he has enough affection for the characters. And also enough respect for us as an audience to trust that we get it without needing to step into that sense of being exploitative. And that’s what I was interested in with Anora, with how you tell a story which, you know, it tells the truth about sex work, which is kind of menial and unglamorous and dreadful. But also that the people within that, you know, can also be really smart and, you know, entirely valid and, you know, characters that we do and should want to spend two and a half hours with. So it’s like respect for the characters and it’s respect for us as an audience.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, really. Yeah, absolutely.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

OK. I would love to get a little deeper into the film and talk about what it’s about, theme-wise. You know, it covers all this ground. It covers Russian oligarchs and sex work and money and power and Coney Island immigrants and the American dream and all that stuff. And I think we’re alluding to something interesting, which is that it’s not really trying to be capital A about any themes in particular. And that’s what makes it kind of good. But what are some of the things that you think the film is trying to say? Danny?

Danny Leigh
I mean, yeah, I’m just . . . I’ve got this sort of Sean Baker in my head, I guess, having talked to him about the film. And I mean, and I think most filmmakers would say, you know, back away from that question because they, you know, their response would be they’re not trying to say anything. It’s, you know, a set of characters in a scenario, in a place, you know. But I mean, I think money is a huge engine for the film and it’s not quite as straightforward, you know, as Anora needing to . . . wanting to be rich. You know, lusting after money. But money and the way that America runs on money and all this stuff is artfully handled in the film. I think that’s very much the engine behind it, you know. And there are these really interesting little connections that are made visually and sometimes, you know, out loud between the different levels of like service workers, you know, who dominate the film.

I mean, that kind of what the film breaks down into is wealthy people and service workers. And the middle class is like completely evaporated and disappeared from this picture. So you have, you know, sex workers and you have sort of bodyguards and goons, and then you have kind of just, you know, the Armenian handlers. And there’s just layer on layer on layer of people having to work for other people. And with this unanswered question, thinking of the person at the top of this food chain — what did they do for their money?

And it’s never actually addressed out loud because, again, it’s one of those things that I think we can probably answer that, you know, reasonably accurately ourselves without Sean Baker telling us. But it’s like everybody is there in this food chain leading up to this kind of apex predator. So I think it is I mean, I think it is about love and money and power.

India Ross
Yeah, I completely agree with and I think, though I’m sure Baker would say he’s not a political filmmaker, there is a kind of political element implicit in the fact that he always seeks out these marginalised communities who tend to live in poverty to a greater or lesser extent. And I think that if there is a political message, it is to say these people should not be invisible. And, you know, I guess, you know, I’m sure he would sort of hate this reading a bit, but it is interesting to watch it in light of the election. And, you know, there has, you know, arguably been an element of liberal elites not seeing people who are from different backgrounds and disenfranchised communities.

And, you know, I’d love to know what proportion of Brighton Beach voted for Trump, but I would say it’s pretty red, right? And you could probably say the same for the other places where he’s you know, he’s done The Florida Project and he did the Red Rocket, which is in rural Texas. He is drawn to these communities which are very underserved in cinema and in life. And there’s a kind of inescapable politics to that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting. I also like . . . I think that it wasn’t . . . There are a lot of things in these themes that it wasn’t coming down hard necessarily on a side about, which I found interesting. Like for example, Anora, she’s scrappy and she kind of knows when she does and doesn’t have power. And the message isn’t like, you know, if you’re a Russian oligarch, you have more power. The message sends more kind of like there are times when she does have power. She takes the power she can get. When she knows she has no power, she concedes. Like those power plays are . . . they’re not just cut and dry. I mean, of course, at the end of the day, she does have no power, but . . . 

India Ross
Well, she doesn’t, she doesn’t I think . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
All of them are unempowered in a way. Like the Armenian henchman is unempowered. And the . . . even the oligarchs are sort of in a weird way. I mean, I know they have power, but their lives are . . . They’re unempowered in their own way, stuck in their . . . 

India Ross
Totally. I thought it was really fun when they, there’s a part of the scene in the movie where they drag the couple to the courthouse to try and annul their marriage and they learn that they can’t do it in New York. And it’s just so funny to see that kind of frustration. How they can’t believe that they’ve run up against a kind of bureaucratic hurdle to their . . . to what they want to do. It’s amazing.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, it’s so funny. I do want to ask, relatedly, you know, there’s been some discussion — more from bloggers than from critics — about whether this is a feminist film or a kind of male-gazey fantasy. There’s this one pivotal scene — it’s about a third of the way through the film where these Armenian mafia guys have found out about this Vegas wedding. And they show up at the son’s mansion in Queens to try to solve the problem for their bosses.

And once they get in, you know, Anora’s new husband goes off running, he takes off, and it becomes their job to keep Anora from getting away. And the scene was really something. Like, it was hilarious. I was laughing out loud through it. It was sort of fun to watch her use again whatever powers she has to like protect herself and get out of the situation. You know, she’s demeaning them. She’s, like, biting them. But there’s also this undertone of violence and threat. And I felt really quite worried for her. Like, you just don’t know what these men are gonna do. And I found myself fluctuating between those two things pretty intensely. And I don’t . . . I mean, it could easily maybe come off as a pretty fun scene. Like if you’re not a woman, I wonder if you could miss that undertone of danger entirely. And I was wondering what you both thought.

Danny Leigh
So full disclosure, I mean, that scene actually was definitely one where, seeing it the second time, seemed to be watching a slightly different film. You know, the first time around, you know, that scene is so outlandish and it’s a long scene. I think it took them a long time to film. And it turns on the fact that she is like five foot nothing. You know, with these three dudes, you know, and actually . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
And she’s kind of beating the shit out of them.

Danny Leigh
Right. She’s giving every bit as good as she gets, you know? And it’s kind of amazing to see. And there is this amazing Tom and Jerry kind of energy to it. That yeah, first time around I just went with that. And then the second time around, I mean, I was really struck by, yeah, how clearly and obviously vulnerable she was and the fact that actually you do have these like not one, not two, but three male characters who are much physically bigger than her.

And although, you know, I mean, personally, it’s open to interpretation. But, you know, I don’t see any contradiction between there being a huge sense of physical threat and vulnerability to Anora and the film being in its own way, I think a piece of feminist filmmaking because, you know, I mean, that’s not . . . you’re not . . . the more unnerving that scene becomes, I think the stronger that statement is.

India Ross
I think that scene works in the sense of she’s sort of like understanding the limits of her own kind of belief in her power and safety. She’s so used to sort of navigating this pretty dodgy club with such kind of aplomb and like she’s not remotely sort of scared by all these sort of gruesome men who are paying her every night. And it’s interesting to see. I think she’s wrestling in that scene with, am I scared or are these just another bunch of kind of bozos that I’m going to dispatch? And there are moments of real jeopardy.

But then I think it’s . . . I like the sort of . . . the complicated kind of murkiness of the fact that the men are also wrestling with what are we doing here? Like, clearly, none of them wants to hurt her or assault her or anything. And they’re obviously there under the employ of these oligarchs. And so they don’t want to sort of piss off their boss. And it’s like everyone is sort of simultaneously wrestling with the kind of psychosexual dynamics of what’s happening. And I think the sort of messiness and the length of the scene kind of speaks to that quite well. And I like that it’s really messy because it is messy. These things are messy. Like it’s not clear.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Danny, you said that it was a feminist film to you. India, I’m curious if it was a feminist film . . . felt like a feminist film to you.

India Ross
I think if I was to pick a side between feminist and not feminist, I would say feminist, in the sense that I don’t think it’s male gazey or exploitative at all. And I think that the character of Anora is fascinating and very kind of richly realised. And I think everything we’ve talked about, about sort of subverting kind of power dynamics, yeah, I mean this all kind of speaks to like a feminist bent, but I would . . . I don’t think it’s a kind of capital F-feminist film. I don’t think that is its intention.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. I want to answer this question, but I actually don’t know the answer. I mean, it’s like, not Barbie.

India Ross
Oh my God. Wash your mouth out.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Because no one’s mad about . . . 

India Ross
Isn’t that crazy that those two films came out in the same year? Like, it’s just wild. And what’s crazy as well is the same people will have watched those two movies. It’s like the same demographic. Like the Hackney Picturehouse . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
(inaudible) Barbie and . . . (inaudible)

India Ross
. . . It’s absolutely rammed from both of those films. Barbie is the exact opposite of this film. It’s like the tail wagging the dog. It’s like, how can we, like, construct this, like, extremely didactic. Like, heavily, like, engineered social commentary and then plug in all the rest of this stuff afterwards.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Lilah Raptopoulos
That kind of leads me to my last question, which is just, you know, this film is an award winner and contender. Sean Baker said to you, Danny, that he never thought of this as an Academy film. We were asking this question about Poor Things. Is it a feminist film? And what is it? I guess my question is basically like, what does it mean that this film is the one that’s an award-winner and contender? What is it doing that people are attaching to?

Danny Leigh
Well, I think some of the answers to that is really prosaic. And it’s that, you know, the Oscars, which had befuddled me for my entire working life, my entire adult life, made much more sense to me when I finally looked at the demographic of the voters. And you realise that actually they are overwhelmingly actors. And I suddenly thought, oh, of course, so many previously baffling decisions that the Academy had made made perfect sense to me as the collective decision-making of a large group of actors.

And Anora, some of the . . . in amongst all of the quite radical things that Anora does, it also does this very, very old-fashioned thing with it, which is, you know, it births a star. And everybody’s gonna want to, for any number of reasons, everybody’s gonna want to get behind that story.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, it’s a great Hollywood story.

Danny Leigh
So Mikey Madison is you know, she is the most obvious Oscar winner I’ve seen in some time. And kind of deservedly, I mean, in amongst that story, the performance is also great. I think there are other things going on. Again, I think that the way that Sean Baker looks at class and the way that he foregrounds characters who are, you know, on the receiving end of the class dynamic, I think everything else which has happened in the world since and is happening now unavoidably means that Anora is gonna be taken a bit more seriously for being, I suppose on a very fundamental level, being a film about people with not much money.

India Ross
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s encouraging in the sense of, you know, I think people are more receptive to more challenging movies. A film that I think is quite analogous to this is American Honey. I don’t know if you guys saw that in 2016, which I was just looking, you know, wasn’t nominated for any kind of big . . . and certainly not the Oscars. And I think these kind of real kind of indie, sort of tough . . . I mean, Anora is fun, but it’s a tough movie in some ways. And I think it’s great that people are more open to sort of being challenged. You know, the sort of schmaltzy Oscars of 20 years ago seemed to be somewhat in the past. And I think that’s great.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. I guess my question is critics love it and awards love it. And I guess what about it feels fresh and appealing now? Like, why are we embracing this now? I think that’s right that like, you know, in 2020, this movie would have been a little maybe not too nuanced or something. Like there’s something about now that audiences are ready for a movie that doesn’t have a bunch of obvious morals.

India Ross
I think this is . . . I sort of feel a bit sort of dirty saying this, but I think this film is kind of edgy and I think edginess is really popular right now. And I hate the idea that it sort of would be devalued in that way so much more than that. But I think, yeah, like, you know, among like my friends, like a really surprising number of people have seen this film, people who would not have watched a movie like this before. And I think the time is just right. People just want to see, yeah, like a story about a sex worker in a Russian community in New York. Like people would just want that, like, I don’t know what it is about now, but I think, yeah, the more edgy, the better.

Danny Leigh
Yeah. I don’t want this to sound cynical, but I wonder if 2023 was the year of Barbie. It kind of makes sense that then Anora takes over. Because with Barbie, and I like Barbie, and you know, I don’t want to put Barbie down, but Barbie is this huge moment and this huge celebration and this huge, to use a quite loaded word at this moment, it was an explosion of joy. And then what happened? And it’s over. It’s kind of done. And it feels Anora might be this slight kind of hangover from that. It feels like the evil twin of Barbie.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, right. Barbie, we want joy. Kamala Harris runs on joy. Trump gets overwhelmingly elected, and maybe we don’t want joy.

Danny Leigh
Mikey Madison to kick someone in the face and breaks their nose.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. Exactly. Maybe . . . Yeah, exactly. Maybe we want someone to say, fuck you, motherfucker. And kick some ass!

Danny Leigh
And she does.

India Ross
Yeah. It’s like a palate cleanser.

Lilah Raptopoulos
India and Danny, thank you so much. We will be back in just a moment for More or Less.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Welcome back for More or Less, where each guest says one thing they want to see more of or less of culturally. India, what do you have?

India Ross
I would like more use of newcomers on screen. I know that Mikey Madison is not quite a newcomer, but she’s relatively new. And Mark Eidelstein, who plays Ivan I just felt was really wonderful. And it just made me think how lazy it is to cast big stars and how boring they are often. Now, I love, you know, I love them occasionally, but I . . . yeah, it’s just so fun to see a new person and the kind of energy that that brings. And it’s so worth the effort of trying to cast them. And I would like see more of that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Totally agree. Danny, what about you?

Danny Leigh
So I’m gonna sound like I’m just riffing on something India said earlier, which I am, but only by accident. I was gonna say that I want more mess, mess and complication are things that I always want more of generally. And it feels like now is a very good time for those. And some of that is to do with Anora, actually, which is a messy and complicated film. But I also saw the director Andrea Arnold, whose new film Bird has just come out. Which is also messy and ragged, and the ruggedness and the mess is part of the beauty of it, I think.

And then I saw a documentary just last night called Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, which is sort of about the Blue Note jazz musicians of the 50s and 60s and also about the CIA and the assassination of their leader of the newly independent Congo in the 60s and about a million and one things that sometimes kind of coalesce into this incredibly stunning moment of clarity and sometimes don’t. And I think both of those approaches are really valid. And so all of those things, you know, they all lead me to think that, you know, now possibly more than ever, we need to embrace complexity.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, that’s good. We do live in mess and it’s sort of yeah, it feels relieving to see it on screen. It’s a great one. OK. I have a less this week. It is less censoring ourselves out of making art. And I’m saying that it’s not movie-related. I’m saying that because I’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for this piece that I’m writing for the magazine that’s coming out this weekend about its employee art show. This is a show in which anyone who works for the Met can submit to it.

It’s been happening for almost 90 years, but this is only the second year that it’s been public and people can see it. And basically, like anyone — if you’re a security guard or you do conservation or you’re a tour guide or a cleaner or a gardener, you can submit your art and it hangs in a wall in a gallery at the Met. And it’s just incredible how many of these employees are actively making art and are actively making very cool art. And, you know, they’re around art all day. And so it just kind of seeps into them and comes out as this incredible stuff. But I just was inspired by how many of them just like considered themselves artists and were making good stuff. And it inspired me to censor myself less and just make more stuff too, because why not?

Danny Leigh
I feel uplifted now that you said that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Good!

India Ross
Me, too!

Lilah Raptopoulos
Danny and India, thank you both so much. This is so much fun.

India Ross
Thank you.

Danny Leigh
Pleasure.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Take a look through the show notes. I’ve put links to everything we’ve discussed in there. Also, I’ve included a link to a kind of a call to survey that the FT Weekend magazine has out now. They are requesting nominations from readers for who you think are the most influential women of 2024. They have an annual Women of the Year special, and they want to know from you who you think are the most influential women. The people that you recommend will influence who’s chosen. So I put a link to that call out in the show notes, too.

Also, there are ways to stay in touch with me on email and on Instagram where I am @lilahrap chatting with all of you about culture,

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here’s my incredible team, Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Joe Salcedo, Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely weekend and we’ll find each other again on Monday.