A Constant Visual Feast

I’m not especially fond of that genre of critic who struts into the saloon like they’re the law, ready to set straight the record on a movie or a director or whoever that happens to be the taste du jour. Yes, I am oppositional, and yes, I generally think that if a Thing is very popular and spoken of ubiquitously, then there’s a decent chance that the Thing in question will yield flaws and sins and weaknesses if properly unpacked; but also, no, I don’t take it as a pleasure or even as a solemn responsibility to be They Of The Contrary Opinion. It’s just what it is. I have opinions. Everyone does.

I will make a minor exception for Anora, and Sean Baker, whose works I love and to whom I have spoken twice, about Tangerine and The Florida Project; and if I’d had the chance to speak with him about Anora, I might’ve said, “Hey, Sean, what the fuck?”

It’s very strange, watching new cinema from an auteur whose work you know and whose voice you know, and who you’ve had conversations with that could have gone on for hours if not for the intervention of time-conscious publicists, and finding that cinema lacking. I will allow for the possibility that on the day I revisit Anora, and I likely will, I will change my tune and embrace it wholeheartedly; there’s much in here that reminds me of the Baker of Prince of Broadway, Tangerine, The Florida Project, Starlet, and Take Out*. But there’s so much else in here that feels totally foreign in his work, to the point of both betraying what I see as his creative spirit, and undermining the story he’s trying to tell in the film. Whenever people complain about an artist’s latest release, whether a book or an album or a movie, for being too polished, I think of a throwaway moment in an episode of Metalocalypse that clowns on exactly that kind of attitude, as if it’s a crime for artists to make use of their resources as they find more success; at the same time, there’s a point where that attitude is valid, and for me, Anora is that point.

If I have one regret in this piece, it’s that I don’t talk nearly enough about Prince of Broadway, easily my favorite Baker film and one of the best films of its decade. So it goes. Judge for yourself: read the piece at Paste Magazine.

*In this house, we pretend Red Rocket never happened.