CODA

 

Writer/director Siân Heder

Heder with Troy Kotsur and Marlee Matlin

Marlee Matlin

The director with Troy Kotsur

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CODA               B                                                                                                                           USA  France  Canada  (111 mi)  2021  d: Siân Heder

Perhaps Covid has a way of playing on one’s sensibilities, as coming out of nearly two years of a worldwide health pandemic leaves a Hollywood community searching for a feel-good story to unite around.  This, apparently, is that film.  Premiering initially in January 2021 at Sundance where it won the Grand Jury Prize (1st place) in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, also the Audience Award, the Directing, Screenwriting, and Editing Award, as well as the Best Ensemble Film before being sold to the Apple + streaming network for a record-breaking $25 million dollars, generating a growing interest towards the end of the year for the Academy Awards, winning three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Troy Kotsur), and Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming the first streaming film, the first Sundance Film Festival premiere, and the first film featuring predominantly deaf actors in pivotal roles to win Best Picture, also the last film in 89 years to win Best Picture with less than 4 Oscar nominations, the others being THE BROADWAY MELODY (1929) at three, WINGS (1927) at two, and GRAND HOTEL (1932) with only one.  A story of a deaf working-class family’s ability to overcome all obstacles, as personified by their only hearing child, a 17-year old daughter who doubles as the family interpreter, able to communicate with the hearing community while practicing sign language with her own family, yet this exhausting talent takes its toll, since running a fishing boat requires someone who can hear, making it difficult to leave the nest, because her family will always need her to connect to the hearing world around them, yet she has her own dreams to pursue, as she has a rare talent for singing and hopes to get accepted by the Berklee College of Music in Boston.  A remake of the highly successful French film THE BÉLIER FAMILY (2014), nominated for six César Awards while generating over $72 million dollars in commercial sales, yet was critically lambasted for showing a level of disrespect to the French deaf community for casting hearing actors in several of its main deaf roles ("La Famille Bélier is yet another cinematic insult to the deaf community").  Philippe Rousselet and the French-based Pathé Studio was one of the original French film producers, with the rights to do a remake, so they approached Siân Heder, a former writer and story editor for the Netflix TV prison drama Orange Is the New Black (2013 – 2019), who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and visited Gloucester every summer, asking her to direct a new film to an American audience, righting the wrongs of the original version, as all the deaf members of the family are played by deaf actors, offering large and narratively significant roles to three deaf actors of extraordinary talent, and their performances give the movie a sense of authenticity and presence that warmly demonstrates a close-knit family.  It’s a formulaic Hollywood movie, however, where one must easily overlook the contrivances utilized to achieve the end goal of happiness.  Nonetheless, the integration of deaf actors into a larger narrative is extremely successful, as audiences uniquely need to see the signing of their hands at all times, as this is their way of expressing themselves, revealing the sad state of affairs when it comes to the casting of deaf actors or those with disabilities in both commercial and independent cinema, both demonstrating a long history from patronizing attitudes to total disregard.  While Troy Kotsur’s acting award is well-deserved, so perfectly fitting the part of a working-class Gloucester fisherman with his wild scraggly hair, a propensity for smoking pot, and very dirty humor, really building his character throughout on so many levels, where an accurate representation of deafness is definitely a good thing, yet the Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay awards are another matter, as in both categories the Academy overlooked Jane Campion’s monumental work, 2021 Top Ten List #1 The Power of the Dog, a revisionist western from a feminist perspective that the Academy viewed as simply too depressing.  This is the same Academy that historically embraced the racist depiction of Native American Indians in John Ford westerns for nearly a century, heavily lauded films that stand in stark contrast to the Campion film, where seriousness of subject matter is hardly a reason to disqualify a film from a best of the year award, but Hollywood has a long history of diminishing the importance of gravity and any reverberating impact on the industry, where it’s often years afterwards before the public questions how these more profoundly relevant films could so easily be overlooked during awards season.     

What might surprise some is how close this film comes to actually being a musical (as we speak, it is being adapted into a musical), as so much is centered around feel-good Motown songs, offering a tinge of nostalgia to some while introducing the upbeat music to a new generation.  The manipulation factor is obvious, as the deaf community has no connection to Motown or even to music, so this is something the hearing community threw in specifically designed for a hearing audience.  Imagine, if you will, how that would play out to a deaf community, as they would not hear any of the melodic beauty or the surging emotions generated by the music and instead wonder what all the fuss is about.  It does, on the other hand, serve as an example of how a musical soundtrack can influence a movie audience, as the happiness factor was a driving component that explains how this film could be chosen by the Hollywood Academy as the best film of the year, feeling more like the criteria has changed, making this an Audience choice of most popular film.  And, in fact, the criteria has changed, (The Oscars' new diversity and inclusion rules for Best Picture ..., also seen here: Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), changes that may have escaped the viewing audience, so instead of best film of the year, which it is still called, it actually means best use of inclusion and diversity.  It’s the sort of thing Hollywood does to make itself feel like they’re more relevant, while remaining completely out of touch with viewing audiences around the world.  This out of touch factor may explain why Hollywood remains obsessed with churning out blockbuster Marvel comic book, superhero movies.  But then a little film like this comes along that strikes a nerve with audiences, perhaps taking them by surprise, as it’s a conventional feel-good story with a happy ending, the antidote, apparently, for the downbeat years of Trump and Covid, and now the unending Russian atrocities in Ukraine.  While the original French story takes place on a rural dairy farm in France, this adapted story takes place in the hardscrabble fishing village of Gloucester, Massachusetts, the same turf as Kenneth Lonergan’s 2016 Top Ten List #5 Manchester by the Sea (2016), though no one speaks with any hint of a Boston accent (like the infamous Kennedy family), where the idiosyncratic Rossi’s are a third-generational fishing family, accentuating the life of Ruby (English actress Emilia Jones, who spent 9-months learning American sign language), a 17-year old high school senior whose parents, Jackie (Marlee Matlin, the first and only deaf actor to win a Best Acting Oscar) and Frank (Troy Kotsur), are deaf, as is her older brother Leo (Daniel Durant).  Their lives revolve around the family business, with Ruby going out on a boat each morning before school with her brother and father, which is how the film opens, with Ruby singing to the music of Etta James, CODA | Intro Scene YouTube (1:56), then returning back to shore where she negotiates the sale of the catch to the wholesaler, who, they’re convinced, takes advantage of them because they’re deaf, and because Ruby is a child.  What immediately stands out are the tender moments between Ruby and her family, with the deaf community aggressively using humor, as they call these price gougers all kinds of names, while they have affectionate profanity that they use for each other as well, especially brother and sister, with the language of signing subtitled below the screen.  While this is not the life of your typical high school kid, it soon picks up on the routine challenges of her school life, where the sweetness of her character is perhaps a little too perfect, as she joins the school choir as an elective simply because a boy she finds cute, Miles, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo from John Carney’s Sing Street (2016), signs up as well.  Once in class, however, when each is asked to sing, she flees the classroom in fright, running to her favorite secluded spot by a rock quarry waterhole and sings her heart out.  Returning back to the music teacher Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez) to apologize, he quickly discerns that she has a voice.  More importantly, viewers quickly realize this is a different kind of movie, "How do you feel when you sing?" | CODA Film | Movie Clips YouTube (1:11). 

This is a film that tugs at your heartstrings, creates absurdly funny situations, yet also involves deaf characters who are authentic, an extremely important consideration, as CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) is a film that helps normalize and destigmatize those with disabilities, as too many throughout society tend to automatically exclude them with a sense of moral superiority, or make mocking jokes at their expense.  Ruby has grown up identifying with a deaf family that is blatantly ostracized and routinely taken advantage of, hearing all the nasty ridicule hurled at them, the only one in her family who can, feeling little recourse, as her family refuses to stand up for themselves, but simply endures the insults.  Amongst themselves, of course, they have no trouble trading barbs and petty insults with one another, choosing particularly expressive language to do so.  But in high school, she tends to stay on the margins and doesn’t really stand out, perhaps afraid to use her voice, but her music instructor pairs her up with Miles singing a duet for an upcoming school concert, choosing Marvin Gaye with Tammi Terrell You're all I need to get by YouTube (2:35),  Both are shy at first, but this opportunity gives them a chance to hang out and just be friends, before developing into a romantic relationship that feels more like puppy love, as the asexual nature stands in stark contrast to her own parents, who are emphatically open about the graphic nature of their own sexuality, hilariously expressed in a scene at the doctor, CODA | Doctor Appointment YouTube (1:28), with an openly embarrassed Ruby lashing out at her parents, purposefully mistranslating in order to teach them a lesson.  The concert sequence is one of the film’s high points, invaluably aided by two deaf female collaborators who assisted the director, Alexandria Wailes and Anne Tomasetti, as in the middle of their duet together, which her family cannot hear, the sound disappears, forcing the audience to identify with the deaf, as we watch them look around at the faces of others to get a feel for what’s going on, taking their cues from what they see, not hear, where interestingly, her parents talk right through their duet through the silence of sign language, but their daughter shines in the moment, something they sense for the very first time, Coda (2021) - Duet scene YouTube (2:35).  The film is adept at capturing small-town isolation, and the way it becomes exacerbated when one is pushed into the margins, yet the film is strongest when it explores the interpersonal dynamics within the Rossi clan, who are pressed up against it, along with other local fishermen, by corrupt business practices from local merchants, eventually forming their own fish co-op with other locals to sell their own fish rather than continually watch some crooked entrepreneur cut deeply into their profits, turning into a small-scale version of On the Waterfront (1954).  Ruby finds herself torn between the obligations she feels to her family and the pursuit of her own dreams, as she’s urged to try out for Berklee, a prestigious school, but if Ruby leaves, her family’s business may be in jeopardy, placing overwhelming pressure from her family to be there for them, as they’re trying to keep their fishing business afloat during particularly rocky times, requiring her interpretive services, yet she’s forced to tell them, “I can’t always be that person.”  The story of a child wanting to form her own identity outside of her parents is universally relatable, reminiscent of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (2017), though neither film is nearly as insightful or as skillfully made as Kogonada’s 2017 Top Ten List #5 Columbus, another low-budget indie film taking place in a small town, which simply resonates with greater depth and purpose.  Unfortunately, this film is susceptible to sentimentality and manipulative plot twists, straddling a fine line between formulaic clichés and a more adept means of personal storytelling, accentuating the interiority of characters’ lives with honesty and compassion.  Yet every time the film takes a darker turn towards anguish or pain, another song resuscitates a more upbeat feeling, adding a positive spin to the family divide that ping pongs back and forth between family obligations and realizing one’s dreams.  Her family sneaks into the balcony of her Berklee audition, bringing the house down as she simultaneously sings and signs to them to the music of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” CODA (2021) - The Audition [HD] YouTube (4:37), kind of a Giorgio Moroder and Jennifer Beals FLASHDANCE (1983) moment, even to the point where she starts again, Flashdance - Final Dance / What A Feeling (1983) - YouTube (5:03), not likely to leave a dry eye in the theater, becoming, in effect, a cinematic fairy tale of personal liberation.

Whiplash

WHIPLASH        B+              

USA  (106 mi)  2014  d:  Damien Chazelle

After his acclaimed 16mm debut film GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH (2009) was made on a shoestring budget, never playing in more than three theaters at the same time across the entire country, the follow-up effort won the Grand Jury 1st Prize for a Dramatic Film at Sundance, while the year before the same film in a shortened version won a Jury Prize for Best U.S. Fiction Short Film.  It’s a curious evolution in filmmaking these days when budding young filmmakers enlarge their awards tested short films into features (19 Short Films That Were Made Into Feature-Length Movies ...), where crime writer Cornell Woolrich (aka William Irish) made a practice of enlarging his short stories into novels, so it’s not like there isn’t a precedent for this kind of thing.  Initially the director conceived the full-length feature, but couldn’t get funding for his film, so he submitted a short film to Sundance, winning an award, which brought about the needed funding of $3.3 million dollars.  Shot in just 19 days, part of the brilliance of the film is the ferociousness in how it is filmed, bringing an edgy, unconventional style to the viewer’s experience, where it’s the first film about jazz music to capture the public’s imagination since Clint Eastwood’s BIRD (1988).  Largely based on the writer/director’s own experience as a band student in high school, where the instructor ruled by fear and intimidation, Chazelle creates a screenplay that embellishes the feeling of teaching through public humiliation, where J.K. Simmons, largely a character actor throughout his thirty-year career, finally gets a juicy lead role and makes the best of it in one of the most physically demanding, emotionally exhaustive performances of the year.  While it may actually be the best performance of the year, usually characters this appallingly deplorable do not go on to win Oscars, but it can happen, such as Forest Whitaker as the murderous egomaniac Idi Amin in THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (2006) or Anthony Hopkins as the fiendishly deadly and cannibalistic Hannibal Lecter in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991).     

Set in a fictitious Schaffer Conservatory of Music in midtown Manhattan, considered the most prestigious music academy in the country, the film opens with a slowly developing drum roll in the dark, where Miles Teller, so good in The Spectacular Now (2013), plays Andrew Neyman, a relentlessly driven drums prodigy student just entering the school.  In a brief opening encounter he realizes he’s being watched by the school’s most feared instructor, Terence Fletcher (Simmons), which sets the stage for an ongoing battle of wills for the duration of the picture.  Surrounded by photos of Buddy Rich, constantly plugging his music into his ears, Andrew aspires to be the greatest jazz drummer in history.  For the record, Rich was a showboating drum virtuoso known for his speed and power that promoted himself front and center above all other members of his band, often appearing on The Tonight Show billing himself as “the world’s greatest drummer.”  Rich was full of macho swagger, a 60-year old black belt in karate who delighted in showing how tough he was, displaying a volatile temper with a short fuse and an imposing personality, well known for leveling insults and throwing backstage tantrums.  It’s ironic that his musical role model also happens to fit his teacher Fletcher to a T, a musical instructor that believes in terrorizing his students, a man fixated with perfection, who will obsessively drive musicians to repeat certain passages literally for hours (“We’re gonna be here all night…”) while others stand around and wait, who teaches by hurling an angry tirade of personally malicious invectives at them, homophobic slurs, and a constant refrain of abusive and degrading insults, believing this motivates them to become better musicians.  Simmons literally inhabits the role, as he has the timing of the vitriolic language along with the contemptuous tone of arrogance down perfectly, repeatedly cutting musicians off after just a few seconds, “Not my tempo,” he says repeatedly, forcing them to do it again and again, always demanding some fictionalized version of perfection that doesn’t exist, something only Fletcher knows, apparently, while others can only aspire to that same mindset.   

What’s also right on target is the cutthroat competition among studio jazz musicians to sit in the lead chair, where students will obviously endure plenty if it will get them to that coveted position.  Certainly one of the scenes of the film shows Andrew in the throes of this madly obsessive state of mind, where he will literally walk through a brick wall to please Fletcher, and out of nowhere he’s involved in a serious car crash, where blood is dripping all over his hands and shirt, yet he refuses help and insistently walks away like nothing happened, heading straight for the concert hall in order to get to that lusted after first chair.  Andrew may be a fictionalized composite of many hopefuls who were literally driven into the ground by the ravings of tyrannical teachers.  The title of the film is the name of a musical piece that is particularly notorious for it’s lightning quick drum tempo changes, where drummers live or die in their attempts to take on this monstrosity of tortuous hell, driving Andrew into incessant drum rehearsals with its self-imposed willingness to absorb punishment and pain, where the vigorous demands result in blood and blisters on his hands, and often even that’s not good enough.  While it may be impossible to please someone who thinks the words “good job” are the most harmful words in the English language, as if they lead to complacency and mediocrity, the contentious relationship that develops between teacher and student becomes not only hurtful and abusive, but destructive, where the ruthlessly oppressive methods ultimately demand total submission, literally crushing his spirit.  It’s painful to look at, yet audacious as hell, riveting stuff “full of sound and fury,” infused with a kind of ecstatic energy where drums unceasingly drive the pace of this film.  The fierce acting between the two combatants couldn’t get more brutally intense, where raw emotion surges to the surface and literally bleeds onscreen, where your mind is racing, thinking “hell hath no fury” like what’s taking place between these two guys.  The musical subject alone is a fascinating study, especially when we see Fletcher perform at the piano in a small west Village jazz club, where it’s nothing at all like we expect, as in our minds he’s ferociously driven to the point of death and destruction, instead it’s conventionally tranquil and bland, suggesting the guy outside the sheltered hallways of school is a complete sell-out in his convictions.  But the film is ultimately a psychological study of misplaced obsession, two men fueled by their own inner fury of fire and brimstone, both crossing the line of outrageous morally unacceptable behavior, where you wonder where it will all lead.  For a moment you think it’s the psych ward, a place familiar to many jazz artists that literally burn themselves out, but instead there’s an ultimate meeting of the minds, a battle royale with a decisively different outcome, where inevitably it’s the furious sound of the drums that has the last word.   

Thin Ice

Actress Lea Thompson and director Jill Sprecher at Sundance

THIN ICE                    C                    

aka:  The Convincer

USA  (93 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Jill Sprecher               ATO Pictures [us]

Originally playing at Sundance 2011 under the name THE CONVINCER, the film changed the title and was re-cut and re-scored for its commercial release, and, according to a letter by the director to Roger Ebert mentioned as a footnote in his review here: Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert], suggests quite a bit more was changed as well:  “The producers and distributor of our film completely re-edited it without me. Nearly 20 minutes were cut; the structure rearranged; out-takes used; voiceover and characters dropped; key plot points omitted; a new score added. Although our names contractually remain on the film, my sister and I do not consider 'Thin Ice' to be our work.”  One wonders how often this is the case in the movie industry, though normally one would hope changes may be slight or mutually agreed to.  However, there is a long history of this in the movie business, which is why it’s so hard for struggling directors to get final cut rights on their films.  According to Anthony Kaufman from indieWIRE: Exclusive: Sundance Film Taken from Director; is Werc Werk Works ..., since the premiere at Sundance, “The film lost its original title; it's now called ‘Thin Ice.’ The film lost its editor, Stephen Mirrione, who won an Oscar for his work on ‘Traffic.’ The film lost its composers, Emmy-winner Alex Wurman and Grammy-winner Bela Fleck. And it has lost its filmmakers, writer-director Jill Sprecher and her sister/co-writer Karen Sprecher.”  Werc Werk Works | Home is the Minneapolis production company on the film, founded by producers Christine Walker and Elizabeth Redleaf, where Walker subsequently resigned her position as President, leaving Redleaf as the CEO in charge, with others following Walker's departure as well, leaving the company’s future in jeopardy as they currently have no new films under contract.  The website mentions the film played at Sundance, but hasn’t mentioned it in any of their news items since then, as they have with their 4 other produced films, releasing the final product with as little fanfare as possible.  The Sprecher sisters, who found out about the cuts made to their film not from a company directive or agency communication, but from reading about it in newspapers and over the Internet, are forbidden under contract restrictions to use a pseudonym or to say anything substantial to the press other than their version of the film will be included on the eventual Blu-Ray release.  Wow, what a backstabbing, behind-the-scenes roller coaster ride!

  

As for the film itself, it reunites the LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006) team of Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin, adding Billy Crudup as comic relief, offering the potential for a dark comedy, but instead this is a somewhat convoluted and disturbing small town crime thriller where everything than can go wrong does, blowing up in the faces of the unsuspecting who grow more and more desperate over time, reminiscent of the Coen brother’s FARGO (1996), but without the meticulous detail of a brilliant script, including the accentuated personalities and hilarious small town charm.  Set in the wintry snow of Kenosha, Wisconsin, we find ourselves at a Midwest insurance convention (resembling a Moose lodge) where Kinnear plays Mickey, a bit downhearted that he didn’t take the top prize for salesman of the year, but ratchets up his hopes as the next year’s winner wins a trip to Aruba.  Before he knows it, he’s been waylaid by a conniving oversexed female who trades sex for stealing his credit cards, waking up in the morning feeling like he got fleeced.  To make up for his bad luck, he hires an insurance agent on the spot, David Harbour as Bob, who was about to go to work for the competition, feeling like he made a steal as Bob is a hard worker and conscientious team player, doing most of the work Mickey should be doing out in the field, but he’s consumed by other affairs, namely losing his wife, Lea Thompson (always excellent), and falling into a seemingly insurmountable mountain of debt.  Any man in his position would feel compelled to try Lady Luck despite the pitiful odds.  But he’s a born salesman, so he’s got experience on his side, perhaps taking advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with an elderly customer Bob finds who’s already over-insured, Alan Arkin as Gorvy Hauer, who may have an invaluable violin lying on the premises which Mickey thinks might come in handy, thinking he could switch violins and the senile old man wouldn’t notice.

As if by design, Gorvy has out of town family business, which Mickey thinks is the perfect opportunity, but there’s a kicker.  Just before he leaves, he has a security alarm installed by Billy Crudup as Randy, a sort of fly by night operator who turns out to be an ex-con, changing the rules of the game midstream.  What seemed like a simple bait and switch runs into serious difficulty, which has both of these guys on the run for a despicable crime intended to shut somebody up.  Over time, these guys dig themselves into a deeper and deeper grave, where Mickey’s money problems escalate with his lies and guilty conscience, both intended to cover up his tracks, but he only grows more exposed, which really pisses off Randy, who thought these guys were a bunch of nobodies that no one would care about, thinking they couldn’t be more perfect foils to take advantage of.  Randy never did any actual respectable work in his life, so he has to con (read threaten) others into giving him money, something he does very well, as he turns into a crazed maniac when things don’t go his way.  Crudup is really loony most of the time, always over the edge, while Kinnear is the ordinary everyman who can’t resist temptation when it comes calling in dollar signs.  Kinnear’s secretary, Michelle Arthur as Karla, makes the most of her small part, while it’s really a two man operation, Kinnear and Crudup who continue to out screw up the other.  What’s missing is any real sense of humor or playfulness in their boneheaded acts, where the characters find themselves caught up in the scrambling details of the story and don’t have much of a chance to breathe life into their characters.  Kinnear can’t stand up to William H. Macy’s role in FARGO of a squirming weasel which is played with a delightful relish of immorality and cowardice, while Kinnear is perhaps too likeable, a decent guy gone to bad ends to try to make up for the fact he’ll never get anywhere in smalltown America without changing the odds by pulling off a big score.  The odds are always stacked against him, and there’s a reason why they call them low “odds,” as it would take a miracle to pull off this caper.  One can only surmise that this wasn’t that good a film to begin with at Sundance, probably made worse by the somewhat desperate, last minute measures taken by the production team which were obviously at odds with the originators of the film, who are themselves daughters of a Wisconsin insurance salesman, and in a truth is stranger than fiction twist ironically woke up one morning after Sundance feeling like they got fleeced.