#garnik

Anora (2024) dir. Sean Baker

Mikey Madison as Ani

Yura Borisov as Igor

We have 5 awesome lead actors in Anora. What do you think is the best thing they bring to their respective roles, and what is your favourite acting moment from each of them?

See, I have no idea who's sending me these asks, so for all I know you could all be the same person. It's cool to realize you're not, though! :)

Anyway, this is super fun! Let's get started:

Vache Tovmasyan brings such a weirdly endearing sad-sack quality to Garnik. On paper, this guy's a meathead henchman but Tovmasyan is able to play him in such a way that you honestly do feel bad for all the terrible things that are happening to him (even as you laugh). I don't know that I would go so far as to call him my poor little meow meow, but there's something so pathetic about the way he keeps getting shit on by life and somehow still retains the ability to fall asleep just about anywhere. There are a lot of good moments to choose from, but my favorite is right after Ani kicks him into the coffee table and he's searching for ice in the kitchen and finding only a bag of dumplings (“rich people don't have ice?”). He comes back to the couch and collapses on it, just as Ani proclaims that she's not going to run if they untie her. “You are not going anywhere,” he sneers, and even though it's meant to sound harsh and menacing, it's in this hilarious nasal whine, courtesy of the broken nose she just gave him.

Karren Karagulian is likewise able to make us feel sympathy for a character who otherwise would seem like a rude and uncompromising jerk. Karagulian has this world-weariness (and frankly such a hangdog look) that you really do believe that he's wasted the last fourteen years of his life babysitting this spoiled rich kid and getting called at the worst possible times to fix whatever mess the brat has managed to create that day. He's also fed up with just about everything else, including the youth of today with their “TikTok, Instagram, TikTok, Instagram!” and the New York City parking authority who keeps ticketing him and trying to tow his car. I love the scene at the christening, when he checks his phone and audibly groans while holding the baby, but I think my favorite moment is when he's yelling at Garnik on speaker phone as he's driving to the mansion. All we really hear is this disembodied voice, mostly over the struggle in the living room between Ani, Igor, and Garnik, but then it cuts to him just absolutely losing it in the car as he races to the mansion (“I swear to fucking God! Garnik, you stupid fucking idiot!”). And you feel kind of bad for him, because, yeah, he really did choose some terrible henchmen to employ.

Mark Eydelshteyn is really fantastic as Ivan. My understanding is that the makers of the movie weren't really expecting that he would bring such a sweet goofiness to Ivan (in the script, he's more just a garden-variety entitled rich kid) and that it really helped to make the audience believe that Ani could fall for him — or at least fall for the fantasy he represented. Eydelshteyn is also really good at letting these little hints of Ivan's selfish, spoiled nature shine through, even in the first act of the movie, like the way he fully ignores Ani while playing his video games or how he fake-berates the manager at Caesars Palace (his anger wasn't real, but the joke was unnecessary and kind of mean). There are a lot of great acting moments (the naked somersault into bed, the stoned rapping to the candy shop owner), but I really like the one on the tarmac with Ani. He's finally sobered up, not just from the night of drinking but also from the dream that he can escape the disappointment of his parents, and all that sweet goofiness is just gone, revealing the self-centered and casually cruel person he really is. (“What do you want me to say?” he tells he girl he proposed to just a few weeks earlier. “Do you understand that now we must go in the fucking plane and fly in fucking Vegas? Get it?” His eyes are just dead; there's no sign he recognizes any of her pain or disappointment.)

Yura Borisov, who is rightly being nominated for all sorts of awards (and is on a lot of short lists for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), brings such soulfulness to Igor. He's “the Russian,” just some guy brought along for back-up in case they need muscle, but he's drawn into the orbit of the story, closer and closer to the whirlwind that is Ani, and we uncover him piece by piece as the film progresses. It's the way that Borisov slowly reveals Igor's true depths and ultimately his role as the movie's moral center that makes the performance so good and so enjoyable to watch. And the silent acting is amazing; just watch the journey he goes on with his eyes alone while he's struggling on the couch with Ani pinned on top of him. In terms of favorite moments, the candy shop scene is definitely up there, just because it reveals — in a way that we already sensed but hadn't really seen — Igor's clear capacity for destructive violence. I also love the delighted little grin and giggle after “Touché, motherfucker?” But I don't really know how anything can compare to the final scene in the car. Because he just flips through layer after layer — resignation, confusion, shock, desire, hope, bewilderment, understanding, and compassion — and he does it without saying a single word.

Honestly, I think Ivan has not seriously thought about either of them since the minute they left the marriage services office and if told Ani and Igor were now a couple, would say “Cool” and shrug his shoulders and then go back to playing his first-person shooter video game. Ani was a couple weeks' worth of fun to him, but she's mostly forgotten, and I don't think he ever even learned Igor's name.

Toros would like to forget about the two of them — he'd like to forget about the whole fiasco altogether — and when he hears they're a now a couple, he's mostly like, “Whatever, maybe they deserve each other.” Ani was a pain in his ass, and Igor was less of a pain in his ass, but he up and quit right after they got back from Vegas, so that's annoying, too. (He's also pissed about the ring going missing and suspects one of them had a hand in it, although he can't prove it. Luckily, he never told the Zakharovs about it, so he's not on the hook for having lost it.)