Director Sian Heder had an obvious aesthetic card to play with CODA, and she saves it for just the right moment. Emilia Jones plays Ruby, a hearing teenager who serves as interpreter for her deaf older brother and parents. At Ruby’s fall choir concert, about two thirds of the way through the film, her family sits in the audience, unable to hear a thing. During Ruby’s number, Heder places the camera in the row behind them and drops the sound, putting us in their place. It’s a simple but powerful choice—especially when Ruby’s parents begin to glean the beauty of her performance by noticing the smiles and even tears around them. (Heder doesn’t overplay her hand by employing the technique again.) CODA manages two other genuinely moving moments—a conversation with her mother and another with her father, played, respectively, by deaf actors Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur—but surrounding those is quite a bit of contrived drama. Ruby must navigate school bullying, her family’s failing fishing business, the prospect of music college, and a burgeoning romance. It’s as if the movie keeps pursuing narrative conflict when there is plenty to dig into with the family’s interpersonal dynamics. Even so, CODA won three Oscars: an adapted screenplay award for Heder; a supporting actor prize for Kotsur; and, shockingly, Best Picture.
(10/9/2022)
