Mikey Madison, Sean Baker, and the rest of Anora’s cast weigh in on that ending
Madison told The A.V. Club she sees the ending as "kind of like a Rorschach test for people" at Anora's New York premiere.
Photo: Hannah Turner Harts/BFA.com
Sean Baker always starts with the ending. “Endings for me are number one. They’re the most important thing. It’s what you’re leaving the audience with,” he told The Verge earlier this month. In fact, he “always has to come up with the ending before even putting one word on paper.” It’s not surprising, then, that the director’s endings are usually all-timers. Tangerine, Red Rocket, and especially The Florida Project all leave their characters floating in perfect ambiguity, allowing for dozens of varied interpretations that may change with repeat viewings.
Anora is no different. At its New York Film Festival screening earlier this month, several people audibly gasped when the screen cut to black—not out of shock, but something closer to relief. While the ending isn’t “happy” in the classic sense of the word, it’s not a total downer either. Who better to help process it than Sean Baker, Mikey Madison, and the rest of the Anora cast, who spoke to The A.V. Club about their own personal interpretations at the film’s New York premiere earlier this month. Unsurprisingly, they varied quite a bit.
Ivy Wolk, who plays a member of Vanya’s posse, characterized the ending as a “release.” “Sean knows how to write the fuck out of an ending,” she said. “So much aggression has been pent up the entire film and a lot of it [Ani] got to exorcize, but not in the way she needed to… Like she didn’t need to be kicking people’s asses or pulling hair, she really just needed—and deserved—to be able to cry.”
Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan, who possess two of the aforementioned kicked asses, expressed a similar level of reverence for Baker’s writing. “I can personally watch that ending forever,” said longtime Baker collaborator Karagulian. “It’s the most appropriate ending for this film. I personally think it’s a happy ending.”