Under the Spotlight: the nuanced power of the closing scene of ‘Anora’
Anora is one of those films that makes you feel absolutely everything. Across 139 minutes, Sean Baker’s story of Ani, a stripper who falls in love with Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov, a wealthy son of a Russian oligarch and briefly enters his world, has audiences laughing, gasping, cheering and then, in the final moments, crying. Obviously, if you’re reading a piece about the final scene, you’ve likely witnessed the impactful closing moments as Mikey Madison puts a closing cherry on top of her star-making role. If not, leave, go watch the film, and come back.
Like all his works, Sean Baker navigates Anora with incredible empathy and understanding. The character of Ani, as a stripper from Brooklyn, could so easily have fallen into a tired caricature. So often, the topic of sex work is handled crassly in media. Historically, strippers especially get a bad rep in media, more often than not being mocked or more commonly seen as the victim in some thrill like in American Psycho than ever being the hero, or they’re glorified to the point of not being human, just a pretty vision that is still trapped by the male gaze and sexualisation.
But Ani is thorough and 3D; Baker’s writing and Madison’s performance ensure that. It started long before the cameras began rolling. To prepare, Madison visited strip clubs and spent time with workers, learning exactly how they worked to portray this role accurately. Baker’s writing was informed by the stories of real-life women, especially Andrea Werhun, who wrote the book Modern Whore, previously worked as a sex worker and was brought onto the film as a creative director. He even cast several girls from the industry as extras. He said his intention for the movie was “telling human stories, by telling stories that are hopefully universal […] It’s helping remove the stigma that’s been applied to [sex work], that’s always been applied to this livelihood.”
However, what feels so special about Anora is that while doing that, the balance is struck perfectly. The film is sexy and fun, shining a light on the joy of this kind of work as we see Ani genuinely enjoying her job. The character is also tough as the fight scene with Vanya’s family’s henchmen, Igor and Toros, is nothing short of thrilling and more than capable of standing up for herself, as proved by her final confrontations with Vanya. But at the same time, Baker takes care not to turn Ani into some superhero or portray her as a one-note figure that’s all sex and strength all the time.
Ani is also a deeply tender character, first seen in the glimpse into her loving, domestic side during her honeymoon period with Vanya but seen clearest in the film’s third act, when her husband abandons her, and it becomes clearer and clearer that he doesn’t care and that his ‘love’ for her was nothing more than a brief moment of fun.
The beautiful complexity of Anora and its titular character is, however, shown best in the final scene. After being forced into a divorce, being given a small payoff fee, and returning to her own home and life in Brooklyn, we see Ani last in the car with Igor. Only moments prior, she’s confronted the henchman, Igor, claiming that he would have raped her if given the chance, and seeming baffled, if not offended, when he said he wouldn’t. This climaxing moment comes at the end of a long night in which Igor, realistically, has been the only kind person to Ani. Yet still, she can’t get past him restraining her during their fight and then can’t accept the fact that he wouldn’t assault her.
In the closing moments, when Igor displays one final act of kindness by showing that he managed to steal back her wedding ring for her, Ani climbs on top of him and tries to fuck him, but when he goes in for a kiss, she breaks down. After a traumatic day of betrayal, this is her breaking moment, and the film ends with only her weeping and the noise of the car windshield.
It’s incredibly striking. Even though there have been other vivid moments of sadness where it was clear that Ani felt hurt, she remains somewhat tough and together throughout, more likely to react with anger or coldness than upset. So, seeing her finally cry and crumble into Igor’s arms is powerful. But to some people, it’s also confusing, wondering what this final moment means or says.
“I’m worried about giving my opinion on it in any way, shape, or form because then it’s taking away from…what my intention of the ending was,” Baker said about this closing moment, ensuring that even in the movie, there is no dialogue and even no music to disrupt this open-to-interpretation ending.
The simplest reading would be that, finally, the day’s events have caught up with Ani. Suddenly, her life shifted from thinking she was going to live a life of luxury with a man who loved her and a family she was keen to be a part of to abruptly being back where she started.
But on a deeper level, the ending of Anora feels like a powerful consideration of sexualisation and the intrinsic trauma of sex work, which, even for people who enjoy their work or survive in the high-risk industry unscathed, inevitably causes a shift in their self-image. Ani’s job is to be sexual, to be viewed as a sexual being and to be sexualised by her clients. It’s not her job to have any level of personality or emotion beyond what they want from her, so already the level of vulnerability she displayed throughout this goose-chase trying to find her husband or throughout her short time with Vanya put her out of her role as a worker and blurred the lines between the sex worker and the girl.
So, in these final moments, when Ani undeniably feels vulnerable and is left alone with Igor, she seems to want to use sexuality as a crutch or a defence mechanism. When she says he would have assaulted her, it’s like she’s trying to regain power by using the one thing she knows she has above men, the thing that has always given her the upper hand in her work. So when he says no, and when he keeps just being nice rather than sexualising her, it’s like she doesn’t know how to handle it.
Even in those closing moments, when Igor is kind to Ani, it’s as if her only response, and the only way she knows how to handle men, is through sex. She’s confident when she gets on top of him; when he again breaks down that wall between Ani and her work by trying to kiss her, she breaks.
That final scene, with its suffocating, tense silence and the subtle yet intense feelings we see Ani cycle through, is such a powerful comment on sexuality, trauma and the way that being sexualised to the extent that sex workers inevitably are can mess with a person. It’s a final moment where Baker and Madison once again handle this film with nuance and empathy, treating Anora with such tenderness as they keep adding dimensions that demand deeper thought and consideration.
