anora (w&d sean baker)

Baker’s films might be said to be reminiscent of Rossellini. Plucky outsiders confronting a skewed social system and fighting for their dignity. Anora, or Ani as she likes to be called, might not appear to have much of it, getting by on her body and unashamedly sleeping with men for money, but deep down she has it in spades. The plucky outsider is a trope that has flourished throughout cinematic history, given that cinema is to such an extent a naturalistic medium. Like Parasite, the film I watched at the same cinema the day before, Anora explores the world’s wealth divides, with much of the action occurring within a privileged mansion (interesting to read that Bong Joon-ho constructed his from scratch). This space is also a voyeuristic space. We the audience, assuming we don’t belong to the one percent, react with the same awe as Annie or the Kim family. We are bred to want this, and we are perhaps no smarter than Ani, who surely ought to realise sooner that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. If there’s a weakness to Baker’s film it’s this: his youthful leads are charismatic and attractive but resolutely thick, without a political bone in their bodies. For all her charisma and street-smarts, it’s hard not to feel that Anora needs to wise up fast, and the film takes its time getting her to this point. It’s also curious to contemplate how the trope of the Russian oligarch is already on the wane. They probably can’t flit across frontiers like they used to, back when Anora was in pre-production. It would be interesting to know what a writer like Sorokin would make of all this: the risque stuff would be right up his street, but he would perhaps have Ivan and family not get off not quite as lightly as Baker lets them. 

the last englishmen: love, war, and the end of empire (deborah baker)

Baker’s tome seeks to encompass a multitude of historical nodal points, which over and underlap. The fall of the Raj, Gandhi and Nehru, the poets Spender and Auden, their brothers, their brothers’ lovers, the conquest of Everest, the impact of the second world war on geo-political history. Perhaps inevitably there are moments when it feels as though a certain shorthand is being employed by the writer. The book is lengthy, but could easily have been ten times as long if it were to fully investigate every strand it takes on. Nevertheless, there is much to be gleaned here. The way in which Auden and Spender’s brothers were part of teams that set out, unsuccessfully to conquer Everest as part of a colonial project, and how both came to realise the vanity, even stupidity of this, in spite of their personal ambitions. Also the way that the scientific work they did in the Himalayas and Karakorams would contribute indirectly to the war effort. In the process, Baker analyses the turbulent decline of the British empire in India, held together by an outdated ideology of British exceptionalism. As such, the book dovetails neatly with Baker’s husband, Amitav Ghosh’s account of the origins of the British empire in India, Smoke and Ashes. 

red rocket (w&d sean baker, w. chris bergoch)

There’s a downbeat charm to its characters and the storytelling of Red Rocket. The set up of a former porn star who arrives back in Texas on the east coast of the USA, fleeing the west coast, battered and bruised, is a terrific way of showing the other side of the country, the rundown clapboard houses that look like they could fall over in the next hurricane, set against the backdrop of a refinery which is far from the most environmentally friendly place in the world to live. The late Brenda Deiss as Lil, Mikey’s mother-in-law, gives one of the most convincing performances of what might be called a ‘real’ person you are ever likely to see. This is a long way from Hollywood, in every sense. The editing and cinematography are great, with Baker composing his narrative using big set piece scenes but also a wealth of tiny, fragmented scenes which help to build up the sense of time passing in a concrete world.

At the film’s heart is Mikey, a character who appears at first to be a likeable dork, akin to a Paul Newman character in, say, Cool Hand Luke. An alt-American, with the swagger and charm and none of the guile. However, as the film goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that Mikey is far more than a dork. The storyline begins to revolve around him grooming the precocious seventeen year old, Strawberry, to become a porn star. A mission he is wholeheartedly committed to, with not the slightest moral compunction. I don’t know if it’s the directors intention to confuse the fuck out of us, but it became harder and harder to square the likeable dork with the pimp. Sure, he gets his comeuppance, but on another level it felt as though the film was still rooting for him. He is, in so many ways, Dirk Diggler’s elder brother, but his very charm becomes problematic as his seduction of Strawberry becomes the central thrust of the second half of Red Rocket’s narrative. Not everyone I have spoken to about this agrees with me, but the film left me feeling as though it wanted to have its strawberry cake and eat it.