Helga without the H

Almost every year I attempt (with varying degrees of success) to watch as many Oscar nominees as possible before the ceremony. I post half-assed reviews here on my blog, and then at the end I write up some sort of silly analysis, predictions, reactions, etc. The quantity and quality depends entirely on how much time and energy I have each year, and I’m not gonna lie, this year’s already starting pretty dang rough! But let’s see how it goes. Today we turn to:

Anora

[6 nominations for best picture, actress (Mikey Madison), supporting actor (Yuriy Borisov), director, original screenplay, and editing]

I’m trying to get a jump-start on watching likely Oscar nominees based on Golden Globe winners. Today’s film is Anora, which was nominated for 5 Golden Globes (best picture, best actress, best supporting actor, best director, and best screenplay) but earned no wins.

I’m confused by the Accolades on this one. First, maybe it had something to do with the HD rental on my tv or something, but the film didn’t look good. It felt like it was filmed on an iPhone by a bunch of highschoolers. My bigger problem, though, was that the film was just way too long. I know this is always my complaint with films, but that’s with good reason. There was not enough plot here to drag out for 2.5 hours. There were scenes that just dragged on for much, much longer than they needed to, to the point that I was uncomfortable watching it. A crips tight edit would have done this film a world of good. One scene in particular that killed me was a pivotal scene where goons show up to tell Anora’s fiance that his parents are on their way and he’s in big trouble. It was a chaotic scene with lots of, well, chaos; screaming, fighting, pratfalls, etc. I think it was meant to be funny? But holy moly this scene just kept going and going and going, with nothing really advancing. This scene was also a prime example of my second main complaint; there were so many scenes where people were just kinda yelling and hell was breaking loose, presumably for comic effect? But it was just irritating and weird. The whole vibe was just off.

Further confusion: I can’t figure out why this film was nominated as a comedy/musical instead of a drama for the GGs. Was it supposed to be funny? If so, what were the jokes? The best I could come up with were just the parts where people kept yelling and getting hurt. I dunno. Now that being said, again, a tightening of the editing could have saved the comic timing here. For example, one of our characters clearly has a head injury, which the other characters ignore, and then the concussioned guy pukes in the car. Concussion vomiting can be hilarious, as demonstrated by The Office. This characters entire arc of being the bumbling injured thug could have worked pretty well. But tonally it just didn’t, because he was too cartoonish in the middle of a film that was mostly serious but overstuffed with people just screaming.

I didn’t dislike the film, though. Mostly I was just bored by it, and wishing it would stop dragging. But it was supposedly receiving high praise, so I did a tiny bit of clicking around the internet to see what other people were saying. And it made me realize that, yeah, there’s plenty of good stuff here. At the core of the film is our protagonist’s struggle to understand the concept of love, which she’s always seen as transactional. We see her world upended twice, and we’re on a journey with her as she fights tooth and nail (literally) to cling to happiness while everything she wants to believe in crumbles through her fingers. There’s good stuff happening here regarding characters; Ana is a foil for Vanya, who is a foil for Igor, who is a foil for Anya, etc. The plot is solid, or at least would be if it moved along better. And plenty of the performances were decent (not all, though- the Russian mom in particular was hella one-dimensional.)