** Light spoilers ahead **
Well, the poster(a happy couple having the time of their lives in Las Vegas) was very misleading. The title of this movie review (“Anora is Pretty Woman of our times”) also painted a very different picture in my mind. I expected a happy ending just like Pretty Woman but it was anything but.
A super-condensed synopsis (minus the third act and the ending): Anora, a New York city stripper of Russian descent, meets Ivan, son of an extremely wealthyy Russian olygarch. They fall in love and get married in Las Vegas almost out of whim, a typical Vegas wedding that we hear about in tabloid newspapers (That famous Vegas wedding Britney Spears had). Up until here it’s like a speed-run version of Pretty Woman indeed. But once Ivan’s parents in Russia came to know about this, things starts going haywire. Extremely furious, they send their goons to hold the couple under custody while they fly from Russia to NYC. From one day to another, the couple’s life turns upside down as the goons intrude their house. Ivan drops everything and runs away leaving his wife Anora behind. After a series of violent tussles, Anora agrees to cooperate with the goons to find Ivan and start searching across all of his stumping grounds. Ivan’s parents finally arrives, and they force Anora to give her consent to nullifying the marriage. (Leaving out the ending)
After watching this movie, my mind started runing to a thousand places. Pity toward Anora first and foremost, and resent against the rich bastard Ivan being such a wuss to drop his wife immediately at the news of his parents coming to get him. The more I pondered upon this movie though, I started thinking more about non-character elements especially American Dream — What fuels it? How does it fall apart and who gets hurt the most from the shattered dream? How do we get back up and move on?
American Dream runs on money: At the very beginning of the movie when Anora and Ivan fell in love, they had nothing to worry about since Ivan didn’t have any problem with financing his lavish lifestyle with his parents’ money. He and his squad casually fly to Las Vegas in a private jet and on a whim he marries Anora. All the scenes from the act 1 felt like highlight reels of happy influencer couples from TikTok or Instagram. Las Vegas is indeed the pinnacle of American Dream — hyperconsumerism enabling everyone (with money) to buy the idea, image, fantasy of happiness including a 4-carat diamond ring and a wedding. Zooming out, wonder if this holds true for a lot of us living in the United State, or even broader, in the world of capitalism. Meeting a partner to get married, buying a house in the suburbs to settle down and start a family, having enough disposable income for leisure and indulgence to feel great about themselves.
This chain of thought led me to think about the sub-prime morgage in mid 2000s. Banks needed to find a way to make more money quickly and people with insufficient savings or income to pay the down payment and mortgage wanted to buy a house or two. The needs were met and it was a win-win. It was a party that lasted for many years funded by the loophole the banks found. Seemed like it will go on and on.
When the mirage shatters, some people get hurt a lot more than others: In 2007, the party train suddenly screeched to a halt. Turned out that the loophole everyone had been taken advantage of wasn’t sustainable. Banks started closing down, people went bankrupt. The ripple effect spreaded across all industries and beyond the United States and a lot more people who didn’t have anything to do with the sub-prime mortgage had to suffer the consequences of the fallout. Thankfully for the big corporates in the United States though, the US government launched a series of programs to bail them out. Their financial situation got stabilized after receiving billions of dollars from the emergency fund (TARP etc). In a few years, things went back to normal for them.
For people who weren’t so lucky to have the government bail them out like the big corporates, they had to suffer a lot worse. Many of them lost their homes and other equity, and it took them much longer for them to get back on their feet.
Similar to this real-life examples, in the movie the mirage of the highlight reel of opulent and care-free lifestyle shatters with a record-scratch when the goons Ivan’s parents sent budges into the happy couple’s life. Everyone’s life gets ruined but some collateral damages occur (eg. the candy shop gets destroyed and the employees threatened as Anora and others desperately tries to search for Ivan). And of course, Ivan gets bailed out by their parents (the marriage gets nullified) and Anora had to acquiesce due to the threat Ivan’s mom made about the safety of her family and friends, so no half of the net worth of Ivan that she expected for her when things go wrong. Again, imbalance between the big guys and the small ones when it comes to suffering the consequences of what the big guys initiate. Great power comes with great responsibility indeed.
Hold your head up and move on: while writing these musings, the lyrics of this 80s song came to my mind — Sweet dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurythmics. We all look for someting to fulfill our sweet dreams. We “use” someone to achieve that goal and are willing to be “used” by others, which makes the relationship between two parties somewhat transactional. I guess it’s inevitable unless the relationships is blood-bound as family. It’s just the reality.
So what happens and things fall apart and what should we do? The chorus of the song suggests an answer which I agree. It’s important to maintain our dignity no matter what others value us as. The name Anora originated from Latin and it means “honor” or “light”. No matter how people try to disrespect or belittle us, we should keep our head up.
And we should move on. We all have our hopes and dreams. We will always make the best decisions at any given time and the sum of all the decisions we made so far had led us to where we are. Some decisions might not have been the best ones if you zoom out and apply the hindsight, but those were the best decisions available.
The last scene of the movie was so heavy and I felt very uncomfortable and sad. I feel bad for the situation Anora has gotten to be in, but I also believe that she is a strong woman and will move on from all of that. It just needs time to heal, but I hope she gets back up and pursue her hopes and dreams, this time a little more wisely. Tomorrow’s another day indeed.
HellaGritty 
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