In January last year, Shan Hader’s CODA: A Child of Deaf Parents premiered at Sundance, and it was a festival triumph: the film won the Grand Prix, Audience Award, Directing Award, and Special Jury Award. casting. He later gained universal love among audiences and critics, and after winning Screen Actors Guild, Producers Guild and BAFTA awards, he received Academy recognitions: “CODA” won in the “Best Supporting Actor” (Troy Kotzur) categories. , “Best Adapted Screenplay” and Best Picture, making it the first Apple+ movie to achieve this feat. In general, such an interest in the essentially classic drama about growing up and family is easy to explain: among colleagues in this genre, this story stands out for its atypical characters.
Gloucester, Massachusetts is a deaf family in the fishing business, and 17-year-old Ruby Rossi is the only hearing member of the family. He helps his deaf parents and brother on the boat, translates someone else’s speech for them and vice versa, and builds his own life (at least he tries to do so): like everyone else, he has a best friend, the school he loves and dreams of singing. I must say he is mostly lucky in life, and the only stumbling block is his relationship with his parents, as it should be in this type of movie about growing up. They do not hear each other not only figuratively, but also literally. Her daughter’s dreams of music are alien to her parents and they can’t physically hear her sing, so when discussing Ruby’s future after a tense conversation, for example, her mother says: “What if she can’t sing?”
Shan Hader does not seem to deliberately prioritize the problem of deafness: The Rossi family is indistinguishable from an ordinary American family, with the exception of sign language, and may even enjoy exemplary family status at times. Here, in everyday life, there are periodic vulgar jokes, talk about everything and nothing at dinner, and the most common problems with work, but not with their ability to hear (it becomes a real challenge for them only once), and Ruby’s boyfriend his friend openly calls his family “ideal”. For them, mutual support is something as necessary as fish in the sea without catching, from which they cannot feed themselves.
It’s also obvious from the outside: their lives wouldn’t be nearly the same if it wasn’t for Ruby, who acts as an a priori sign language interpreter, among them. No matter how difficult it is for him to become dreams of entering a music college in another city, in his value system the family occupies a dominant place despite all the sacrifices that must be made on his behalf. And the sacrifices aren’t really insignificant – his future is at stake. The song teacher Bernardo Villalobos, or simply Mr. Vee, is indirectly responsible for the latter, who sees in the film the talent of a new student and gives him a chance at a career. Demanding, unable to tolerate delay, but does not force her to give up her relatives for the sake of a dream, leaves room for maneuver, does not compromise, and says directly: “I don’t need failure because she’s afraid to even try.” With a more intense passion, CODA could turn into a good musical drama (for example, a musical drama). in the spirit of Damien Chazelle’s “Obsession” that once became a Sundance triumph), but this story is a little more personal and more about family than music.
The special characters, of course, required a special approach from Shan Hader: he wrote the script with two sign language consultants (both deaf), no less careful approach to the casting. The most famous deaf actress and the only one to win an Oscar (Children of Silence), Marley Matlin was the first to be approved for the role of the main character’s mother, insisting that other deaf characters in turn insist. it can also be played by actors who are hard of hearing: that’s why the movie starred Troy Kotzur and Daniel Duran. But perhaps the biggest responsibility of the entire cast was on Emilia Jones, who was an essential part of the two-hour timekeeping, her character speaking in sign language that the actress had to learn specifically for the shoot.
There’s no need to mention outstanding acting work here (yes, they’re all good, but hardly anyone gets the “wow” effect), but “CODA” doesn’t require it – it’s just about simplicity and “ordinary”. the people it shows. This film is full of music, sounds, sometimes quiet, but showing the world as Rossi hears it, it’s about life in all its manifestations, with its problems and overcomings, compromises, passion and sincere family love. This is, for example, a striking difference between “CODA” and the same tense “Obsession”, and from “The Sound of Metal,” which was nominated for the rather dramatic Oscar last year with Riz Ahmed, he gradually loses his hearing and begins to look for himself somewhere. New World.
Source: People Talk
