By Eric Valentine
Let’s play a guessing game. You need to guess what I’m thinking about. Here are your three clues:
- Elitist
- Cancel culture
- Out of touch
If you guessed Hollywood, you’re right. Your prize? You get to watch the Oscar-winning film CODA, or at least read this review/commentary about why it’s important you do.
Out of Touch
CODA is an acronym for children of deaf adults, a relatively obscure group of people, although 90% of children born to deaf parents can hear. And if you didn’t know that, maybe it’s not only Hollywood who’s out of touch.
The film is about the tight-knit, somewhat feral, Rossi family—both parents and their eldest son are deaf, their daughter Ruby is not. Ruby’s brightest talent—outside of multitasking the deaf and hearing worlds and largely being the proverbial adult of the family—is her voice, the beautifully airy soprano of Emilia Jones, the young actress who plays her.
Guess what happens when a talented child who seems to have everything they need in life doesn’t have a home that understands their talent. The gift goes unnoticed. That is, until a high school jazz choir teacher Bernardo (SPOILER ALERT: learn to roll your Rs!), played by Eugenio Derbez, gets her to audition for choir.
The story unfolds from there as we watch the Rossi family navigate the implications of Ruby’s talent. No, not how rich and famous they’ll be if she makes a hit record. More like, how the heck they’re supposed to run their family-owned fishing boat without a hearing person to do everything from notice sirens to negotiate fish auction prices. We realize how out of touch our society is when it comes to the culture of the deaf.
Cancel Culture
Speaking of culture, let’s talk cancel culture. If you think it’s something liberal or new, listen up. History lesson: author J.D. Salinger, comedian Lenny Bruce, boxer Muhammad Ali, none of them were banned by liberals forcing on America their world view. These were conservative movements, well-intended at best and bigoted hate at worst. But how is it relevant to CODA?
In Hollywood, if you’re thinking about making a movie about a deaf person, it doesn’t take long before you think about Marlee Matlin. She’s the first deaf actress to win an Oscar (Children of a Lesser God, 1987) and it springboarded an acting career still going strong today. Once she signed on to the project, CODA had a chance to get made. Matlin, however, refused to be part of the project unless every single deaf character was played by an actor who in real life is also deaf. Result: Leo Rossi, the son, would be played by deaf actor Daniel Durant, and Frank Rossi, the father, would be played by deaf actor Troy Kotsur.
If you think that’s nice but just another version of affirmative action, consider all the results. This film didn’t only win the Oscar for the best movie of the year, one of the deaf actors—Kotsur—also took home a statue in gold for best supporting actor.
Elitist
Perhaps the critical success of CODA is just elitist Hollywood film critics being politically correct and it’s not as good a movie as they want to make us believe it is. After all, to date it has only made $1.6 million at the box office. Right, at the box office. But the film is something Netflix purchased—at some film festival in some mountain resort town in some state out west not too far from Sun Valley—for $25 million. Now that’s an expensive ‘lunch.’
For me, CODA does have a tone that plays at times like an after-school special or Hallmark Channel holiday story. At times. And, in those scenes, it’s the best darn after school or Hallmark movie scene I’ve ever seen. At other times, it’s classic storytelling with a fresh view. I won’t spoil for you the two special scenes that would serve as perfect examples of the slight-surprise devices used within the latter parts of the film. I will explain the one used early on.
Before Ruby unleashes her gem of a voice, Bernardo asks her to tell him why she’s so scared to sing. She explains, “I don’t know how to say it.”
“Try!” Bernardo demands.
And Ruby begins to sign her explanation with uber-emotive big brown eyes and the emotional grace only found in the hand and arm gestures of American Sign Language. (Did you know all languages have their own version of sign language? What a hassle.). She doesn’t say one spoken word and it’s a moment that will find you utterly speechless. Every important moment in Ruby’s life up until that point had to be expressed without spoken word. Of course she didn’t know how to ‘say’ it.
And if you still can’t stomach American elitism, fret not. The film is an adaptation of a 2014 film called La Famille Bélier. A Belgian-French film, of course. Ah, there’s no business like show business.
La Fin