Sean Baker’s Anora opens like a movie that might sweep you into a glossy modern fairy tale. Ani, played by Mikey Madison, works the room with speed, instinct, and a face that can flip from bored to magnetic in a second. Then the film keeps changing shape. What makes that shift so exciting is that Baker and cinematographer Drew Daniels are not simply telling us how to feel through plot.
They build the tone through the image and the soundscape, scene by scene, until the movie starts to feel slippery in the best way. One minute it is seductive, funny, and a little wild. The next, it is tense, lonely, and almost painfully intimate.
The Film Looks Like a Dream Until It Doesn’t
A big part of Anora’s power comes from how good it is at making fantasy feel tangible. Daniels shot the film on 35 mm anamorphic, and that choice matters. The image has texture, glow, and a slight roughness around the edges that keeps the movie from feeling too polished. It is beautiful, but not precious. You can feel the cold air of Brooklyn, the heat of the club, the tacky luxury of Vanya’s world, and the weird in-between space where Ani starts to imagine a better life.
That visual texture also helps Baker pull off one of his favorite tricks, which is letting realism and movie-star fantasy sit in the same frame. The club scenes have neon shimmer, movement, and bodies everywhere, but they are not shot like a perfume ad. There is sweat in them. There is exhaustion in them. There is routine in them.
The Camera Keeps Changing With Ani
One of the smartest things Baker does is shift visual style depending on where Ani is emotionally. Early on, parts of the film have a loose, almost documentary pulse. Baker has talked about wanting some sections to feel very docu, especially in the club and during the search sequences later on.
Then other stretches become more controlled, with locked-down shots, dolly moves, and a more romantic-comedy rhythm. That contrast is not flashy for the sake of being flashy. It lets the movie move with Ani’s hopes and misreadings. When she starts to believe she has crossed into a different life, the movie briefly seems willing to believe it too.
This is where the cinematography gets especially sly. The camera is often warm to Ani without turning her into a fantasy object. It watches her think. It watches her work. It watches her realize, in tiny increments, that the fairy tale she has stepped into might be built on absolutely nothing solid.
The Songs Sell the Fantasy
If the cinematography gives Anora its seductive surface, the soundtrack helps sell the rush of the fantasy. Baker has a habit of using a few big, memorable songs as emotional anchors, almost like substitute score, and Anora follows that pattern.
“Greatest Day” becomes especially important in how the film frames Ani and Vanya’s euphoric bubble, and the soundtrack also includes tracks like “All the Things She Said,” which adds another layer of pop melodrama and messy longing. These are not random needle drops tossed in to make the movie feel cool. They are mood machines. They push scenes toward exhilaration, speed, and temporary emotional certainty.
What is clever is that the music often gives characters a feeling of momentum that their actual lives do not support. Ani and Vanya can look like the stars of their own reckless romance because the soundtrack lets them borrow that energy for a while. The songs create lift. They make poor judgment feel glamorous. They make impulsiveness feel like destiny.
The Lack of Score Changes Everything
The really interesting move, though, is what Anora does when the songs drop away. Baker chose not to build the film around a conventional score, and that absence becomes one of the defining tonal tools in the whole movie. Without a constant musical cushion telling us what is romantic, tragic, or funny, the world feels harsher and more unpredictable.
That choice makes the film sharper in two ways. First, it protects the realism. Ani’s world does not feel wrapped in cinematic sympathy every second. Second, it makes the emotional pivots hit harder. A conventional score would smooth some of the jagged edges. Anora prefers to leave them exposed. When scenes turn uncomfortable, they really turn.
Sound Becomes Emotional Pressure
Because there is no dominant score guiding the movie, the sound design becomes unusually important. Baker has said that sound effects were crucial, and you can feel that in the film’s last stretch, where small noises start carrying emotional weight. The now-famous use of the windshield wipers near the end is a perfect example. It is such a plain, physical sound, but in context it becomes rhythmic, lonely, and deeply unsettling. That is classic Baker. He finds something ordinary and lets it cut deeper than a swelling orchestral cue ever could.
This approach also fits the film’s emotional honesty. Ani spends much of the movie surrounded by noise, performance, and people projecting power. By the time quieter sounds start taking over, the effect is almost brutal. The movie stops performing romance and starts listening to what is left after illusion burns off. You hear exhaustion. You hear space. You hear how vulnerable a person sounds when the party music has finally shut up.
The Tone Lives in the Tension
What makes Anora so memorable is that its tone never settles into one mode for long. The cinematography can make a cheap room glow and a lavish house feel cold. The soundtrack can lift a scene into romantic delirium, then vanish and leave the floor exposed beneath it.
The result is a film that feels playful, anxious, glamorous, ridiculous, sad, and cuttingly observant, often within the same sequence. That is not inconsistency. That is the design. Baker, Daniels, and Madison understand that Ani’s experience is unstable, so the movie itself becomes unstable in a controlled, artful way.
Anora gets its tone from the push and pull between seduction and reality. The camera gives the fantasy shape, the music gives it speed, and the bare soundscape quietly waits for the moment it can break the spell. That is why the movie lingers. It does not simply show Ani moving through different worlds. It makes those worlds sound and look different enough that we feel her hopes rising, wobbling, and finally crashing back to earth.
Rachel Sikkema is a New Zealand-based writer and creative entrepreneur who explores the intersection of film, culture, and modern relationships. Through her articles, she examines how stories shape the way we connect, love and see ourselves. When she’s not writing about film and television, she’s watching Dexter and The White Lotus for the third time.