Anora: What I Felt That Isn’t Getting Noticed
Anora: What I Felt That Isn’t Getting Noticed
By Klara Adalena
SPOILER-ALERT: This article contains major spoilers of the Oscar-acclaimed Anora film
I felt if I read one more review of Anora that uses the word transactional, I might lose my mind.
The mainstream consensus has officially flattened the last five minutes of the film into a neat little box, which inevitably uses that one same word every single time: “transactional”. It then goes on with something like this: She tries to pay him back with sex, he misreads it as a romantic cue, she breaks down and finally releases all the pent-up emotions.
This may be true on some level. But for me, something happened those final minutes in the theater. I watched those final minutes unfold, and the moment the credits rolled, I knew I had witnessed something important — and no review out there came close to helping me place my experience.
So I do what I do: I went back to every scene, every dialogue, every frame. I started wording what I had seen. A coherent frame started to emerge. Not on the level of the mind. On the level of the soul.
I realized that the tradition I was stepping into was that of Jung, Estes and Campbell. Archetypes, stories, myths and symbols.
What follows is not simply another interpretation. It is not meant to replace, but to bring to the foreground what risks to be overlooked.
Looking through an archetypical lens, everything came together in a way I hadn’t seen in any other interpretation. Detail after detail that were treated like background noise — a name, a ring, the exact insult that made her explode, the precise moment she finally broke — turned out to matter. Nothing needed to be explained away. It all built up to the finale. That is what finally dissolved my sense of dissonance.
I invite you to follow along and then decide for yourself what this adds for you… and if it helps you make meaning of your experience.
In depth psychology we use the language of characters, storyline, symbols and rituals. So let’s look at what each represents in our psyche and how they speak to our conscious as well as how they speak to our unconscious.
Archetypically a story is a container for timeless yet timely wisdom on how to live our lives in a soulful way. It often contains a reflection and a message for our time, spoken in the language of the soul.
This lens had me see something is special about Anora right away.
Ani
Ani is introduced as uplifting, sensual, free in her sexuality. The one every man wants close. She earns her money with lap dancing and she is a favorite among the clients. She wants to be known as Ani, even though her real name is Anora.
In the movie the meaning of her name Anora is an important part of the plot. Anora also has a double meaning: honor and light. Her light is radiant from the start. But as sexworker, she is shown to live a grim life in a shared apartment next to the railway. There is little honor in the sense of respect and status. Maybe that is one reason why she doesn’t use her full name.
Regaining her honor while keeping her light will be a central theme throughout the film and seeing it gives a whole new twist to the ending.
At first sight, Anora is a common tale about a woman betrayed in marriage. She is poor and swooped up by the rich guy, who uses her and then discards her like trash. Painful, unsettling as a cultural phenomenon, but nothing new or surprising.
The Two Men
But the movie doesn’t end after her being discarded. Suddenly, she is with another man, one we hardly noticed before. Here it could still stray into old grounds.
The good and the bad, fighting over the trophy woman. Old as day and not something to alert our unconscious. But that’s not what happens.
Anora doesn’t allow herself to become the fought over trophy woman. The two men don’t fight. There are not one good and one bad, instead both Igor and Ivan have good and bad traits.
This is new territory for the unconscious, and that is a big part of why this is unsettling. It becomes even more powerful because we are kept at our edge until the very end as to what is actually going on… even though it has been unfolding in plain sight. That is masterful storytelling, and allows the deeper message to land even harder.
Jump aboard and let’s go through the movie scene by scene to note details that turn out to matter.
Ivan and Ani
I looked up the names of the main male figures too. It turns out in Russia the name Ivan has a double meaning too:
Ivan / Vanya (Иван) — “God is Gracious” / “The Everyman Fool”
- The Linguistic Meaning: Ivan is the Slavic form of John, which originates from Hebrew and means “God is gracious” or “God has shown favor”.
- The Cultural Meaning: In Russian culture and folklore, Ivan holds a massive dual meaning. On one hand, it is the name of great Czars (Ivan the Terrible). On the other hand, it is the ultimate “placeholder” name for the average, common man (the Russian equivalent of a “John Doe”). Most famously in Russian fairy tales, he is “Ivan the Fool” (Ivan-durak) — a simple-minded, immature youth who acts completely contrary to common sense but stumbles into luck and wealth.
This dual meaning exactly fits this figure in the movie: Ivan starts as prince, splashing with money and being charming to who he wants at his side. But his name itself warns our unconscious that there might be more than what meets the eye.
Ani/Anora sees through Ivan’s charms from the start and can’t imagine anyone honoring her. But something shifts when he offers her marriage with imploring innocent eyes. She sets aside her intuition and says yes. As viewers, our mind tells us the dream is too good to be true and we know this is a cue for disaster.
In the language of fairy tale though, her choice is good. Because in our culture marriage to a woman is a way to get honor. Through saying yes Ani chooses to claim her other side. In fairy tales this means the status quo will be shaken and opportunities for wholeness will arise. Already in this moment the landscape is set for an initiation story line. However the chances of it remaining a half initiation are big because in our culture, women have had to choose between honor (marriage) and light (sexuality). The wife or the whore. Our soul isn’t really paying attention yet though a tiny flicker of hope might be hidden in a dark corner.
In the story, we start seeing Ivan lose some of his princely glamour and more of Ivan’s boyish silly side comes through. Like when he can’t relate to the woman curled against his side but allows himself to be sucked into a computer game instead. His sex acts miss any maturity. It’s one big frenzy to get his release, Ani as object. We never see her orgasm.
Meanwhile, a different power is coming into play: the parents. They are like an older version of Ivan/ Anora: the father presents worthy on the outside but is sheepishly boyish on the inside, absorbed in his phone in many scenes and laughing at his own wife when her facade breaks. The mother demands honor but the light has gone from her soul. They represent the sore reality of our culture: its wife or whore. They don’t see Ani, they don’t see her light, they only see their classification of her. To them, once a “whore”, never a wife. So they start setting everything in working to undo what has been done. The marriage must be annulled.
They enter the home of Ivan and Ani first through their 3 helpers, and as soon as Ivan hears his parents are coming, he flees. The prince fails this chance to stand up for his right to light, to Ani, and slides off into the silly fool. He doesn’t trust the power of their bond and how it can free him from his parent’s tyranny. He accepts the narrative that the marriage can and should be annulled.
Ani however does not give in so easily. She fights for her honor, fights for her rightful marriage, holding up her 4 carats diamond wedding ring.
The Ring
Every story has its symbols, and the wedding ring is the central symbol of the Anora movie. The diamond with it’s beautiful play of light represents light and play, obviously. But as wedding ring, to the woman it also represents honor. This ring thus represents wholeness and integration for Anora. This is enforced by the shape of the ring itself: a full circle. The ring will play a central role in the ending scene.
Ani is fighting hard for her marriage to be respected by these 3 men, with a ferociousness of life vs death that bewilders the men and seems funny to the viewer. But to Ani, it is not funny. She fights for her right for wholeness, she fights against millennia of oppression where women have been denied to have both… and she refuses to give up. This is extra powerful as her husband is nowhere in sight.
Ani holds the thrust for change, for freedom, that is at the core of any change. She embodies the soul that knows no boundary is forever.
During the fight, she keeps being derogated as “prostitute” or “whore”, humiliated for her free sexuality and light, enforcing the wife whore split — and every time, Ani protests with added fire.
Our culture expects women to adhere when the old splits are reinforced. This is a woman who doesn’t back down. She fights for dear life and accesses powers beyond the possible. Two strong men don’t know how to contain her. Here the unconscious would start to pay attention if our conscious mind wasn’t so distracted by all the humour brought into the scenes.
But there is one figure who is paying attention. He sees. He knows.
He is always in the frame is the most dishonoring moments — witnessing with gravity — but so unobtrusive we hardly notice him.
The fight continues, Ani/Anora fighting with desperate power, but when ultimately they take the ring from her, she breaks. Her man is already gone, now the ring has been taken and it seems her last chance for honor and wholeness is gone. She screams, but instead of listening to her she is being gagged.
Like women have been for millennia.
But this time, someone in the background witnesses. He screams back, with the same desperation.
It doesn’t prevent the inevitable. Not yet.
Ani, gagged and hand tied, breaks and gives in. She is coerced into helping find her husband. We as audience know it won’t help her. Our souls contract… will this be another story that puts the bird back in the cage? Are we women never going to break free? But we can’t worry too much, our mind is distracted with increasing hilarious scenes.
The Annulment
Ani and the 3 men leave the home, in search of the husband, and the level of silliness increases. Eventually he is found at the very place where he first met Ani, stoned, drunk and wasted.
The parents arrive.
Ani sees her husband won’t stand for her, for them.
She makes a stand for at least a respectful and fair divorce.
The “honorable” mother shows her evil side: she plays upon Ani’s love for her family threatening to hurt them, and Ani gives in.
But there is a witness. Someone who literally stands behind her in the frame. Someone who refuses to wink back and turns his head away when the mother tries to make him complicit.
Is it the presence of this witness at this moment of utter hopelessness that gives Ani her power back?
Is it the rage of women through the ages, bundling together and pushing her on knowing the tides are about to change?
We will never know, but what is certain, is that when inside the private jet Ani witnesses Ivan sliding off totally into his silly fool side, she starts regaining her power. She turns the joke on them. She stands with honor while the family bicker amongst each other.
One person sees it. He sees it and pours Ani a drink.
No words, not even a look… just a gesture of support acknowledging what just happened.
At the annulment ceremony, the theme repeats, the family is greedy and nasty, Ani rises further in her power and honor, and this time, the witness speaks out.
Igor
His name is Igor. In Russian his name means protective warrior:
Igor (Игорь) — “The Protective Warrior”
- The Linguistic Meaning: The name Igor is of East Slavic origin, heavily derived from the Old Norse name Ingvarr (brought to ancient Rus’ by Varangian warriors). It literally translates to “Warrior” or “Protector under the god Ing”. The second part of its root (varr) explicitly means “to guard, defend, or protect”.
So there is both the warrior aspect and the protective aspect, which we also see in the movie: he is the hired muscle called to do the dirty work. But he is also the protector.
He starts out as the hired hand, one of the three sent to set things in order even before the parents arrive. Doing what he is told and for the rest remaining in the background.
But when he is alone with Ani a moment, right after the three entered the house, he introduces himself. A subtle acknowledgment that she is not just the disturbance. He sees her as human.
It doesn’t take him long to understand what is going on, and to see the job he is meant to perform is not OK. This couple is married, and this woman has a right to her ring and her marriage… whether she is a sexworker or not.
He understands her husband abandoned her.
He doesn’t interfere, doesn’t do anything except what he is told.
But he witnesses with truth.
Everything.
His face shows care and concern in every scene, especially when the treatment to Ani is most unfair.
In Jungian terms, witnessing without acting is a form of what Jung called holding the tension of opposites: staying present to something unresolved without collapsing it prematurely into rescue or judgment. Jung saw it as an essential step towards wholeness. Towards initiation.
In the culmination moment, when the annulment papers are signed, Igor finally speaks. “Maybe it’s not my place to say this, but I think Ani at least deserves an apology.”
The other hired hands immediately start removing him, and the mother stands behind her son: “Ivan will never apologize”.
But the echo of his words reverberates through the room.
Anora
Ani rises further and calls out the reality with shattering clarity: her now ex-husband is a pussy, and he hates his mother so much he married a prostitute just to spite her. After these words she leaves the room with head held high, Igor following.
They may stay inside the split, but Ani rises into Anora and cracks the façade.
The father laughs at his own wife, the mother sits humiliated.
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The parents’ desperate attempt to enforce the split succeeded on the outer level… but not without exposing the hollowness and meanness of their own lives. Anora’s fight has not been for nothing. A crack has been made.
So the story seems to end with a crack of hope, but unable to shift the outcome dictated by the weight of thousands of years of oppression of women and the life force.
Or wait.
Igor and Anora
After everything seems done and over, the movie shows Igor and Anora alone in the mansion, a night suspended in time between leaving the chaos and going back to their own lives.
The TV is playing, the situation seems to mirror the scenes with Ivan on his computer games with Ani curled up against him. But Igor isn’t interested in the TV. His attention is with Anora.
He strikes up a conversation. He says he likes her real name, Anora. He googles it and says it means honor and light. Though seemingly just polite conversation, to the soul this is a big moment.
Because he speaks out loud what he has seen all along: honor and light do both belong to Anora.
He has indeed been holding the opposites.
Symbolically, his words convey she never needed the marriage to give her honor to her — it was already hers.
For Anora though, the humiliation and disappointment of the last 24 hours is still too real, and she can’t believe him. Not yet. But this moment seeds right into the ending.
Her Initiation
The next morning Igor in the old battered car he has been driving takes her to her home through a raging blizzard.
When Anora sees the door of her home, and gathers courage to step out of the car and back into her old life and face her losses, Igor stops her.
He holds up his hand, and opens it to reveal the 4-carats diamond wedding ring.
The transactional-minded analysts have argued over whether this was given as a request for sex, and though I am not against the transactional perspective, I think in this case that could never be.
A 4-carats diamond ring can be worth $100,000. If he had sold it, he could have bought himself sex every week for the rest of his life. Within the transactional perspective, he would have kept it.
And that is exactly what makes this moment so important.
The fact that he doesn’t keep and sell it means he understands its symbolical value is greater than its monetary value.
He holds it up for her to take and then steps out of the car to carry her suitcases to her door. He asks nothing back.
This act equals Frodo’s task at the end of Lord of the Rings to throw the ring into the fire. Frodo couldn’t make himself do it. Igor can. The wedding ring that men have used all through patriarchy to control women, that Anora fought so hard for, he took the trouble and risk to get it back for her, and now holds it up for her to take.
Now, Anora can accept. She takes the ring.
In Jungian terms, this is her initiation moment. The affirmation and culmination of her fight. She overcame the split. She is not wife not whore. She is whole.
The ring freely given is the final piece of her quest.
The Parallel
In another story, Sealskin Soulskin told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run With the Wolves, a similar theme is worked through. There, the marriage lasts longer and slowly the woman starts to lose her light. There too, the woman fights to have it both, in her case, to have her sealskin back so she can slip back into the water where she came from. But the man refuses out of fear she would never come back. He too escapes the scene, running off into a blizzard filled night. There too, there was a witness. In that case, the son of the two.
And there too, the son was called to rise above himself, rise above self-preservation, and in an act of courage the boy follows the call, runs into the blizzard, finds the skin of his mother and returns it to her, even though he knows it might mean she will leave him.
Getting her skin back is her initiation, her moment that she can be whole and live both under and above water. Just like receiving the ring is Anora’s initiation.
In Sealskin Soulskin this is followed by a ritual act of the mother: 3 times, she blows her breath into the mouth of the boy. This is his initiation, and it allows him to be with her in her underwater world for 7 beautiful days. He is a human, he needs to return to the land like she needs to stay in the water. But now, he knows the water.
Both of them remain loyal to each other, and every full moon, they meet on a special rock out in sea. She dives up from the depths; he walks over from the land. He grows up to be a powerful shaman, and people say it is because of his full moon talks with a seal.
Estes interprets the story as showing the woman moving from uninitiated to initiated: inhabiting both water and land. I agree, and want to add another theme: of the old masculine, run by possession and fear, retracting and the new masculine, run by care and concern, rising. Jung might call this the mature masculine, as in Jungian psychology holding the tensions of the opposites is a sign of maturity. There is no fight. The old gets exposed and runs, and only then do we see the new was already there, waiting in the sidelines. It is the interaction between the woman and the mature masculine that initiates them both in powers the old masculine will never understand.
This translates directly to the Anore movie. Ivan represents the old masculine, seemingly all powerful and glamorous, but during the story his weakness gets exposed and he flees. Igor represents the new masculine, powerless at first, yet moving the plot forward in exactly the way is needed through witnessing, caring and generosity.
His Initiation
It’s through this lens that I look at the ending scene of Anora. Sitting in the car, the blizzard raging outside as fierce as in Sealskin Soulskin, Anora with the ring in her hand sits paralyzed.
Initiation is typically accompanied by deep clarity. Maybe in this moment the film of the past days rewinds and she sees the role Igor has played all along. How it affirmed her fight and her right to fight. How he had been “holding up the ring” all along. How her fight did create the opening.
And maybe the reason she doesn’t leave the car and walk to that door back into her old life is because she has outgrown her old world. What is certain, is she stays in the car.
When Igor comes back from bringing the suitcases, confused, she says: “this car is just like you”.
Igor doesn’t understand, hears it as banter and asks: “do you like it?”
Slowly Anora looks at him and her face shows a torn soul. “No”, she says.
It is said with ambiguity, confusion almost. I hear it as confirmation of the inner shift she might just have had. She doesn’t stay because she likes it. She stays because she found herself here. With the car and Igor as witnesses.
Igor seems to understand, because for the first time in the movie he is more than a witness, he comes forward with something personal: he smiles and shares: “it is my grandmother’s”.
It’s quite unusual for a grown up man to be driving his grandmother’s car. This might be a hint we should hear this sentence more symbolical than literal. In that case, it might give us a hint at where this man got his wisdom and presence from: from his grandmother.
Whatever the case, this moment of Igor opening up triggers an unexpected sequel.
As if she herself doesn’t understand what she is doing, Anora climbs on top of Igor and starts having sex with him. It is not the seductive Ani we have seen a lot of. It is primal, raw, confused.
This is the moment everyone speaks about and that leaves no one untouched.
Sean Baker the director told us this ending sex scene is ambiguous on purpose. They even decided to cut words to create more ambiguity. Mikey Madison, who plays Anora, has asked for more interpretations, apparently not satisfied with what is out there.
So here is mine, rooted in the parallels with Sealskin Soulskin, the ring as symbol, Igor as silent witness and Anora’s initiation minutes ago.
In Sealskin Soulskin right after her own initiation the mother blew her breath into her son’s mouth to be able let him experience the underwater world. To initiate him. Is see the sex scene here as more symbolic than literal. Like blowing air into the son’s mouth is not meant to be understood literal, it is symbolic.
In that case, rather than a regular sex act, this would be a sacred alchemical coitus where the opposites are united and lead transforms into gold. Another initiation, this time from her for him.
I am not saying Sean Baker intended this on purpose. Typically, these themes of the soul come through when the time is right, and when the director leaves space for it. What Sean Baker did, was choose to create the buildup and then with the conscious choice for ambiguity allow for a symbolic dimension to enter the scene.
Staying within this symbolical perspective, the “sex” means: enveloping Igor with raw primal sensual feminine energy. Like the boy was submerged into the depth of the waters so Igor is submerged into the ocean of female orgasm.
Ivan always rushed to his own orgasms and then left. He never discovered this depth. Igor stays.
Some say he tries to kiss her as she sits atop him, and she pushes him away. What I saw was different though. From my place, I saw a man sensing her orgasmic wave building as she sits on top of him. Not looking away, not focusing on his own peak, he holds his arms out for her to brace against and hold onto in her wildest moment of shattering release.
Her orgasm is his initiation.
Then, the wild energies in her take the form of anger, and she beats her fists against his chest. He seems to know it is not personal and simply holds her through it.
She cracks into violent tears and sobs wildly, allowing herself to drop against his chest. He keeps embracing, with care and concern. Nothing to be fixed, no heroic acts. Simply being there for her through everything, holding the ring out for her to take.
The movie ends there.
Why No Standard Explanation Fit
Standard explanations either stay within the frame of “rich guy scoops up poor girl, uses and discards her”, and they see the ending as a reinforcement of the hopelessness of Ani’s situation.
Or they stay within the frame of “the good and the bad guy and in the end the good one wins her”, and they hope for a romantic sequel between Anora and Igor.
I offer the perspective that neither satisfy us and both leave us in cognitive dissonance because they don’t fit what we actually saw. Both frames seem to not see the value the ring had for Anora nor its monetary value and the power of Igor giving her exactly that ring back. Both have to treat much of the film’s specific detail as incidental — why she breaks exactly when the ring is taken and not before, why she explodes extra hard at the words ‘prostitute’ or ‘whore’, why the annulment itself hinges on her being a sexworker, why Igor brings up the meaning of her name to Anora, why she says “the car is just like you” just before the final scene. In the archetypal frame, none of that is incidental. Every one of those choices is doing exactly the work the story needs it to do.
Through including a depth psychology perspective, I traced back that this story refuses both frames and shows us a new storyline. One where the old masculine exposes itself and retracts, while the new masculine comes from the shadows. One where Anora fights a heroic fight to come out of the splits that seem insurmountable… and in the end, it is the two storylines of Igor and Anora coming together that allows both to become initiated and whole.
This storyline has shown to be mapped perfectly on Sealksin Soulskin, and that story does continue beyond the initiations, and that gives new inspiration to the discussion on: “how does this continue?”
In that story the woman gently puts the boy back on land, and they each continue a rich life in their own element. She becomes a woman of soul, he becomes a shaman. They stay loyal to each, meeting on that one special rock every full moon. They continue to heal each other with a bond that the old masculine will never understand.
You Decide
Now that you followed along in the initiation theme exploration it is your moment to decide. Did it give context to why no explanation before satisfied you? Did it add to making sense of the seemingly random mysterious elements, like the ring, the blizzard, the witnessing, the naming, the television conversation, the final embrace ? And most importantly: did it fit with how you experienced the movie?
Whether Sean Baker consciously built every layer this way is almost beside the point. Art goes beyond the intention of the creator. What counts is whether for you it “rings true” with your experience.
What The Story Reveals
I promised at the start that opening up to archetypical perspectives may show us something of the reflection and message in the story.
The idea behind depth psychology is that the characters and story lines from the story also apply to our personal lives and to the culture as a whole. The challenge is to name them without collapsing into morals, instructions or standard takeaways.
One of the main things we encountered is that the story of Anora does not fit standard explanations. It is addressing and breaking open splits that have kept women and men stuck under all of patriarchy, creating initiations into a new reality.
According to depth psychology, the fact that it comes up now, means that in our time these initiations are also happening or ready to happen.
More specifically, the old story line of the “good” and the “bad” fighting is shown not to fit. Meaning that it is no longer about fighting the “bad”. Neither in our personal lives, nor on a social level.
The fight this story shows, comes from the woman, Anora. She fights for something, not against. She fights to be seen, to be heard, to be respected, to be listened to. She fights for her honor without having to give up her light.
The existing power, represented by Ivan and his parents, can’t acknowledge her and do what they can to annul her new claimed rights (the marriage).
In this process, their hollowness and meanness gets exposed. Part of them flees (Ivan).
Change happens not because the old power changes, but because they cease to be important. It turns out Igor has been there all along, in the shadows, doing exactly what was needed: witnessing Anora and her fight and seeing the truth in what she stands for.
In the movie the point comes when all seems lost, but in fact Igor and Anora continue the story, and mutually initiate each other in a new level of wholeness.
It’s still chaotic, messy, ambiguous… but the traits are there.
Whether it’s in our individual lives or as society, the story models a new pattern:
The fight is now for the women/ the feminine. We stand not against, but for. We may trust that even if it seems no one hears, someone is listening. Someone is witnessing.
For the men/ the masculine a new role is being shown: it’s no longer about heroic acts, not about conquering. Everyone else in the story treats Anora’s claim — I am married, I have honor, this is mine — as something to dismiss, manage, or wait out. Igor is the one figure who treats it as simply true. He doesn’t validate her by comforting her; he validates her by not looking away. That is the new or mature masculine role: witnessing with care and concern, holding up the ring without asking for possession.
The mature masculine seems to have found its place in our culture enough to get its own storyline. Together, they create these deeper Initiations for each other.
Still muddy, and we still cut at the moment of the initiations.
Their future we can only guess from looking at the parallel with Sealskin Soulskin.
And what we see there, is beautiful and touching. Each in their own element, connected without possessing each other, healing each other and themselves, becoming a wise, soulful presence in their community.
