Anora (dir. Sean Baker)
This year’s Palme d’Or winner is one of the most exciting pieces of cinema to come down the pipeline since, well, the last time Sean Baker made a movie. Baker’s typical subjects are always unique, oftentimes chronicling odd, but very real people, places, and things that no other filmmaker would even think to point a camera at, let alone mine madcap comedy from. In Anora, we follow the titular character (Mikey Madison) as she pivots from the world of exotic dancing and escort services into a “girlfriend experience” that quickly becomes an ill-advised marriage to Ivan, a wealthy and immature Russian immigrant (Mark Eidelshtein).
It’s a development that doesn’t sit well with Ivan’s high-society parents, and they send a crew of goons to get the marriage annulled. What follows is an intensely, and intensely playful journey to locate the terrified Ivan while Anora tries to maintain her marriage and dignity in the face of powers much higher than her her social paygrade.
It’s a star-making turn for Madison, who brings Anora to life, warts and all. Her characterization is one that fits with Baker’s M.O. Namely, he doesn’t pull any punches on making his characters both flawed and human. If Anora were a high-class, cunning lady, she wouldn’t be very interesting. But as depicted here she’s a young woman perpetually in survival mode, ready to cling to anything that could make her a buck and potentially rescue her from the grind. As such, we see her making stupid decisions and selling herself short due to an inherent lack of self-worth. These shortcomings, however, make her as human as any one of us, and thus quite easy to root for. Anora is a good person with a kind soul, but she’s also young, naive, and likely sitting under a pile of unpaid bills. Who could blame her for shacking up with a childish loser who just happens to be drowning in cash?
Anora moves forward at a propulsive pace, maintaining a level of zany energy that never undercuts the emotional resonance of any moment. In fact, one could isolate twenty seconds from any point in the film and find character-based comedy, ticking clock intensity, and refreshingly honest emotional resonance in equal measure, with not a second of it feeling thematically confused or excessive.
Baker’s camera finds beauty in the grime (and vice versa, if we’re being honest). One moment in particulars sticks out in my mind. A hazy lens flare washes over our leads as they have sex in a Vegas hotel room. It’s a patient moment that chooses not to focus on the writhing bodies or their environment, instead expending its cinematic energy creating a vibe that says everything about the situation without a single word being spoken. It’s a moment of high art, and it occurs just as our protagonist dives head first into a doomed situation, simultaneously against our wishes (we want what’s best for her) and aligned with them (get paid and get laid, girl).
If Tom Cruise saved the movies by putting butts in seats, Sean Baker has saved cinema by pushing the concept of “movies as empathy machines” well beyond its perceived limits. Anora is the best work he’s done so far, and one of the very best movies I have ever seen.
Grand Theft Hamlet (dir. Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls)
Anyone who has ever produced any sort of live entertainment knows how difficult it can be to corral so many disparate pieces into a cohesive whole. Schedules, actors, tech issues — you name it, and Murphy’s Law does the rest. One can only imagine how much more difficult it would be if there were an omnipresent threat of a bazooka attack from a random stranger with nothing to lose.
Grand Theft Hamlet is the first movie of its kind, taking place entirely inside of GTA Online, the open-world video game where pretty much anything, including a performance of Hamlet, is possible. When actors Same Crane and Mark Oosterveen found themselves unemployed and bored during COVID-19 lockdowns, a chance discovery of an empty amphitheater within GTA sparked an idea: why not put on a show? The film chronicles the devising, casting, and executing of Shakespeare’a l epic tragedy in an entirely digital world, highlighting the human need to create at all costs.
What starts as a playful lark soon becomes an obsession, bringing real-world drama into the digital universe. When Sam and his wife (and co-director) argue about the former’s emotional distance, they do so in a darkened street while being watched by NPCs (and eventually while being pursued by in-game cops). When a potential actor is invited to the filmmaker’s in-game apartment, he takes pains to make sure that this he’s not interested in anything sexual before disappearing (logging off) in an instant, never to be seen again.
The expansive world of GTA gives the creators a free rein, but they are comically limited by it all the same. The avatar mechanics don’t allow a full range of expression, which is why a character in an alien costume violently thrusts his pelvis during a monologue, or why, seconds after a moment of classic Shakespearean tragedy, a character delivers two enthusiastic thumbs up, Borat style.
Grand Theft Hamlet finds surprising depth within its silly concept, exploring themes of identity and connectivity in a palatable and fun way. One actor reveals that she recently came out as trans to her family, and her journey feels similar to Hamlet’s — finding herself while simultaneously learning who her true friends are. Her avatar, as to be expected, is robustly feminine and expressively designed, illustrating a truth within the online world that can only be found through playful artifice. It’s rather beautiful.
At the end of the day, the creatives behind the project, the supportive in-game strangers, and even the nameless pranksters who can’t help but to pump bullets and crash vehicles into anything they can are all driven by the same thing: playfulness. Humans are a decidedly unserious lot, all things considered, and our need for play — for expressing joy — bonds us all.
