Does Anora deserve the backlash?
Usually, when a film wins Best Picture at the Oscars, the inevitable backlash takes years, if not decades, to come to the surface. Sometimes, it’s simply because the “wrong film” won (Crash over Brokeback Mountain, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan), and on other occasions, it is because a film’s social or sexual politics have dated incredibly badly. (Here’s looking at you, American Beauty.) Yet after what must be the most contentious and controversial Oscar season in living memory, during which no fewer than four separate films were all tipped for glory at one point, the eventual victor ludorum, Sean Baker’s Anora, is facing a vicious and sustained assault on its credentials that is without precedent.
