Did the Duet Do It?

Probably should recuse myself from reviewing a film shot on and off the tip of Cape Ann. Every day I’m on Plum Island looking at Gloucester and Rockport over some seven miles of the Gulf of Maine. And since every review to date mentions Oscars, who needs another?

As powerful, beautiful, poignant, eye-opening (or was it ear-closing?) as they say, CODA is disarmingly funny. Quite a surprise to someone who went expecting not much more than a local treat while disadvantaged people get their due.

Tempting to call CODA‘s main plot Whiplash without the nastiness of the drum-throwing and drummer-beating teacher. But the choir director poses no physical threat. In fact, when we first see him and through much of the film, he fits a gay stereotype that the film merely hints at while knocking down stereotypes of the deaf–and by extension, of all people with disabilities.

Spoiler alert: Film reviewers like to use the word “masterstroke” for unexpected, understated gems. CODA‘s portrayal of Mr. V is a masterstroke on the backswing.

That may be purely coincidental, which would be just as much to Director Sian Heder’s credit. Uncoincidental are scenes giving the audience some sense–or denial of sense–of the deaf experience (a technique used in 2019’s Sound of Metal, an Oscar-nominee for Best Picture and winner of Best Sound). Though subtitles remain at the bottom of the screen, CODA goes silent at times, making us experience a town meeting, a rowdy barroom, a school concert as deaf people do.

In what had to be a deliberate challenge to a hearing audience, this happens in the climactic scene at the concert. Most films about music build to that scene in which the musician usually performs triumphantly. In a few cases, they fail miserably. Either way, we hear it.

Not in CODA. We hear Ruby and Miles exchange the opening lyrics of their much-anticipated duet, and then silence. Camera brings us to Ruby’s deaf parents in the middle of the audience trying to take cues from others as the camera pans people they see but cannot hear. Another film might have done it briefly, but CODA sustains the silence for the duration of the song, no sound until the booming ovation when the singers are finished.

Rather than sharing the triumph, the film shares what it is to be deaf.

The duet of Ruby and Miles brought back memories of my teaching days. Did Mr. V deliberately match the “du-et” so they would do it together? One of many word-plays–which are beyond surprising for a story about a deaf family–this had to do with rehearsing “You’re All I Need,” the classic duet popularized by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell in 1968, but it leaves us wondering if teacher was playing matchmaker. They were clearly his two favorites, and he coached both for entry into Boston’s Berklee School of Music.

Did I do it with the earnest Portuguese kid who reminded me of myself and the free-spirited Italian lass, two of my best writers who both took a liking to my antics and assignments in just my second semester teaching in 1985? I waited until the end of the semester to tell them about papers they had in common but were in conflict on one key (if contrived by me) point. Something to do with high schools requiring community service as I recall, not the idea of it but the options for it. Held them at the end of a class, as happens in CODA, and urged they read each other’s A essays and discuss it. And then I quickly left the room without awaiting their answer, just as Mr. V does.

This was in the days before emails. Finding a gig closer to home, I did not return to Bridgewater State, and so I had no idea what became of them. Again, just as with the film, we do not know if the duet did or will do it.

Which is as it should be for a film titled CODA, the musical term for a melodic afterthought, a diversion from–but still related to–the main theme and melody that usually fades out. (Think of the end of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” or of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Lucky Man,” or of Beethoven who was known for long, loud codas despite being–or maybe because he was–deaf.)

But that’s double-entendre. The D in CODA is for “Deaf,” as in “Child Of Deaf Adults.” Although the film offers a kind and generous tough-love teacher in place of the monster who taught in Whiplash, Ruby Rossi endures the ridicule of classmates for being a CODA.

Then there’s the nastiness of the fishing industry, the depleted stock, regulatory demands, underpricing that keeps those with the boats, such as the Rossi family, under heel. And the tension that compounds around the dinner table, especially for the teenage daughter who wants to sing. The plots converge when the Rossi family makes a bold move to stand on their own, a struggle which unites the deaf with the rest of the fishing fleet, though that, too, is left hanging at film’s end.

As if to make up for the silence of the duet, we do hear and see Ruby’s full–and fully original–interpretation of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” (1966) before the credits roll. In fact, you could fairly say she does a duet, but I will neither spoil nor alert you to it by saying how or why.

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To do Cape Ann justice on the big screen, it should be in theaters everywhere–including downtown Newburyport where it will play the Screening Room through next Thursday, August 26.

My review of Whiplash (2014) is no longer accessible in the files of the weekly newspaper that ran it, but you can download it here: