lucky time I Loved ‘Anora,’ but I Still Hope It Loses at the Oscars

“Anora” is my favorite film of 2024. It’s brutal, hilarious, alive with a wild kinetic energy that feels like the essence of cinema itself. It’s up for six Oscars, including best picture, and deservedly so. While most Hollywood movies don’t care enough about Eastern European characters to even get the names right, the film’s director, Sean Baker, went to the trouble of filling it with authentic native dialogue and casting Russian celebrity actors. As a screenwriter who grew up speaking Russian, worked extensively in Moscow before 2022 and rubbed shoulders with some oligarchs (believe me when I tell you that the character of Ivan’s mom is a type), I applaud that decision.

And yet that authenticity is also a quandary for many of its fans, including me. While “Anora” is nothing as silly as pro-Russian or anti-Russian, its Oscar nominations, especially the best supporting actor one for Yura Borisov, have been touted by some as a national victory in Russia. Which puts me in the unsettling position of being in some truly terrible company in cheering for it.

The film’s success inadvertently mirrors that of Putinism in general right now. On Feb. 18, President Trump posited that Ukraine bore blame for the war; six days later, on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion, the United States sided with the likes of North Korea in voting against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia. And as Mr. Borisov and Mark Eydelshteyn, two apolitical Russian citizens, flank the American actress Mikey Madison at award show after award show, it’s hard not to see that this, too, promotes a notion of Russia as our complicated but palatable partner. A gray actor, if you will.

I genuinely don’t know how to feel about all of this. I don’t believe in cultural boycotts. I bristle at the idea of punishing artists for their citizenship. It is also undeniable that both Mr. Borisov and Mr. Eydelshteyn do a fantastic job in “Anora”; both Mr. Borisov’s hangdog thug and Mr. Eydelshteyn’s puppy-on-cocaine nepo baby are absolutely indelible performances.

On the other hand,jiliace since the start of the war, hundreds if not thousands of other Russian film and theater actors have found the courage to speak out against President Vladimir Putin of Russia and left the country. Given how tightly the acting profession is tied to one’s command of the language, for most of them the move meant sacrificing their careers in the name of principle. A select few have found occasional employment in the West. Masha Mashkova, the daughter of the iconic leading man Vladimir Mashkov (“Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol”), bravely cut ties not just with her homeland but also with her father, one of Mr. Putin’s biggest public supporters; she has since played a cosmonaut on the Apple TV+ series “For All Mankind” and, well, another cosmonaut in last year’s “I.S.S.”

But there are only so many cosmonaut parts to go around. For every Ms. Mashkova, hundreds eke out a living on the expatriate circuit with things like poetry readings and one-person shows. Many use the newfound freedom to do things unimaginable back home. The brilliant actor and director Alisa Khazanova, for instance, stars in the English-language play “The Last Word,” which dramatizes final court statements made by Russian political prisoners. After this, going back to Russia would mean a very real risk not just to her career but also to her safety.

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Overall, violent crime fell 3 percent and property crime fell 2.6 percent in 2023, with burglaries down 7.6 percent and larceny down 4.4 percent. Car thefts, though, continue to be an exception, rising more than 12 percent from the year before.

But the move backfired in a way that few supporters expected. Californians in 2021 actually tossed nearly 50 percent more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed in 2014, according to data from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.

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