When I pivoted* to covering CODA for the fine folks at Music, Movies, & Hoops, I put forth in the pitch that the film might win big at the Oscars, which were set to run just a few nights after I contacted my editors. Lo: I was right. The only award it deserved, frankly, was Best Supporting for Troy Kotsur. It’s a perfectly fine movie with some good to recommend it**, some mediocrity, and some bad things I struggled with.
I dug into my background learning ASL in high school, and teaching some to my child today, to unpack my feelings on CODA, a deaf movie where deaf people don’t get the same space to exist as the hearing girl with a dream of singing on stage. Sorry! I have a big issue with that! Seems like a really backwards concept!
You can read my full thoughts over at MMH.
*Instead of Everything Everywhere All At Once, which wasn’t screened remotely for critics and only screened in-person, and which I maybe couldn’t have covered just because of recent family circumstances, I had to find something else; I saw CODA last year out of Sundance, and so that became my “something else.”
**In addition to Kotsur: Marlee Matlin, legend.
A Constant Visual Feast 