Originally published January 2021
CODA, directed by Sian Heder, has the most intriguing and original cast of this year’s Best Picture nominees. However, it’s the least original film of the group, a “be yourself” drama that’s even more saddled with cliché than you’d expect from the premise: a girl with deaf parents who just wants to sing. It’s Disney Channel-inspired in concept and, truly, Disney Channel-adjacent in quality.
In one sense, CODA is a missed opportunity, given that we’ve seen so little of deaf individuals onscreen, notwithstanding last year’s Sound of Metal (my review here). But more accurately speaking, Heder falls into a trap set by that very opportunity, struggling to develop his characters due to a worry of shocking the audience with too much newness. While most movies instinctively focus their exposition on how the characters are unique and worthy of our attention, CODA instead spends its efforts showing us how the characters are totally normal, hoping to preempt the otherness we might have been tempted to assign them.
Ruby (Emilia Jones), the protagonist whose family is deaf, sings along to the radio, gets bullied by jerks, rolls her eyes at her parents, and talks sex with her girlfriend. Given the overwhelming normalcy highlighted by these early scenes, why, other than the deafness of her family, are we watching an entire movie about her?
And the script is even more mediocre than she is. The music teacher (Eugenio Derbez) happens to need two students to sing a duet for the fall concert, and he chooses Ruby along with—wait for it—her secret crush. The song is a love song, and the two singers lack chemistry at first, but the teacher berates them: “It’s a duet! That means ‘do it’ together!” Hmm… Where could this be going??
When we were kids, movies like High School Musical (2006) and shows like Hannah Montana were helpful to us, because they gave us a foothold on what was expected socially, on how to be ordinary. But as adults, we need the opposite: how to be extraordinary, how to tap into what’s odd or strange about ourselves without letting society sand off our edges. CODA, with its commendable aim of providing a fresh glimpse into the experience of deaf families, had a lot of edge to start with—but sanded it all off before it got to the screen, trapping its interesting cast in the most mainstream content imaginable.
The movie’s better moments—most of them featuring Ruby’s parents, who, like Disney Channel parents, have to provide all the entertainment to compensate for their dull children—are infrequent and non-central. And the parents’ main dilemma, the lack of a sign language interpreter for their fishing boat in Ruby’s absence, goes totally unresolved. Is this really Best Picture material?
In an early scene, Ruby’s teacher casually wonders if his students have been watching too much Glee, a Disney-style spinoff if there ever was one. It’s a revealing slip. Why make the reference as a screenwriter, if not as a subconscious admission?
–Jim Andersen
For more reviews, check out my review of Dune (2021).