REVIEW: 'CODA' (2021, Sian Heder)
When CODA won big at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021, creating an Oscar buzz and clinching more victories, I ignored it. I wasn’t interested in what seemed to be a melodramatic TV movie that uses disability, hopes and dreams, and music for emotional manipulation.
But when it took home Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (Tony Kostur) at the recently (and violent) Academy Awards, I reluctantly logged onto AppleTV+ to check it out. Soon, I found myself breaking into sobs, hooked on a formulaic, mawkish drama loosely based on the 2014 French film La Famille Bélier.
Why? Because it works.
Sure, at one point I cringed and said out loud, “No! Not a montage!” But like most sentimental films, it happened. So, I gritted my teeth and waited, then ended up weeping again.
CODA, which stands for “child of deaf adults,” is about 17-year-old Ruby Rossi (British actor Emilia Jones), the only hearing person in her family of fishermen in a small coastal town in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Ruby is the voice of her close-knit family (they’re so close that Tinder is considered a shared activity). She’s the interpreter of their frustrations, values, and, awkwardly, their dirty jokes. But in a larger sense, Ruby is her family’s life raft.
Written and directed by Sian Heder (she likewise helmed a previous Sundance gem, Tallulah), CODA is more like a sappy Hallmark Channel drama than a Sundance American indie.
Yet there’s more to CODA than a mere representation of the deaf community. Her family's deafness can be interchanged with any other limitation, and the conflict remains the same: a child bound by duty to look after her parents and older brother and which gets complicated by her own dreams and aspirations.
In one scene, Ruby gets selfish for once, enjoying a carefree swim with her crush. But Heder juxtaposes the moment with scenes of Ruby’s family getting unglued without her. This allows the audience to feel empathy for both sides. It also makes the Rossi family dynamics richer.
Why? Because it works.
Sure, at one point I cringed and said out loud, “No! Not a montage!” But like most sentimental films, it happened. So, I gritted my teeth and waited, then ended up weeping again.
CODA, which stands for “child of deaf adults,” is about 17-year-old Ruby Rossi (British actor Emilia Jones), the only hearing person in her family of fishermen in a small coastal town in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Ruby is the voice of her close-knit family (they’re so close that Tinder is considered a shared activity). She’s the interpreter of their frustrations, values, and, awkwardly, their dirty jokes. But in a larger sense, Ruby is her family’s life raft.
Written and directed by Sian Heder (she likewise helmed a previous Sundance gem, Tallulah), CODA is more like a sappy Hallmark Channel drama than a Sundance American indie.
Yet there’s more to CODA than a mere representation of the deaf community. Her family's deafness can be interchanged with any other limitation, and the conflict remains the same: a child bound by duty to look after her parents and older brother and which gets complicated by her own dreams and aspirations.
In one scene, Ruby gets selfish for once, enjoying a carefree swim with her crush. But Heder juxtaposes the moment with scenes of Ruby’s family getting unglued without her. This allows the audience to feel empathy for both sides. It also makes the Rossi family dynamics richer.
In other scenes that demonstrate a physical distance between Ruby and her family, Heder avoids close-ups of a particular family member — it’s always the mom, dad, and older brother together in one frame, always as one unit. Because this is Ruby’s love story with her whole family.
CODA is dotted with cliches: first love, mean high school girls, a moody music teacher, and most of all, the discovery of Ruby’s hidden singing prowess, which is her secret joy, an exceptional talent inadvertently honed while growing up in a silent home.
Used to singing without her family hearing her, she struggles to perform in front of an audience. And this is the job of her encouraging Mexican teacher (Eugenio Derbez), to bring out Ruby's artistic gift and encourage her to find fulfillment.
Jones, though frustratingly stoic at times, sings amazingly, effortlessly shifting from a small meek voice to uninhibited, powerful trills in a snap of a finger.
Heder immerses us in Ruby’s family that we warm up to its members. We get embarrassed by the dad’s (a terrific Katsur) sex jokes, feel the pain and insecurity of the emasculated older brother (Daniel Durant), and flinch at the unabashedly honest mom (Oscar winner Marlee Matlin). And we darn wish for Ruby to get that scholarship at the Berklee College of Music.
A touching tale of love and sacrifice, CODA is one of the best movies of 2021. It’s the kind of happy-ever-after predictable story we root for. We can guess the ending, but we savor the bittersweet journey because it’s the narrative details that tug at the heartstrings.
4.5/5 stars
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