The family drama is a hugely unlikely Best Picture winner. But it sort of makes sense.
And why would they? With a modest budget of $10 million, it premiered entirely at the virtual Sundance Film Festival, with everyone sitting on their couches at the festival home. This happened 14 months before these Oscars, which is an extraordinarily long time for a film to pick up steam. (There's been another Oscar since then.) No Sundance premiere has ever won Best Picture.
Although it starred a few well-known actors—including Marlee Matlin, the only deaf person to ever win an Oscar for her performance (for Children of a Lesser God in 1987), and the multi-talented now- Best Actor winner Troy Kotsur — there was no catchy name or obvious Oscar-bait hook. CODA, named for the acronym Children of Deaf Adults, is a film about a hard of hearing teenager who works with her deaf parents and brother in their fishing business, but with aspirations to study music. retains it. It is based on a French film (similar to 2014's La Famille Bellier). A large part of it is in American Sign Language. It's sweet, and funny, and a little cheesy, and very earnest.
But here we are: a film distributed by a streaming service has won Best Picture for the first time in the Oscars' 94-year history. And recently against the odds and most predictions, that streaming service wasn't Netflix, whose films The Power of the Dog and Don't Look Up were considered among the strongest contenders for the big prize of the night. It was Apple TV+, which is probably the best streaming service out there, but hasn't managed to gain a lot of traction with customers especially in the streamer glut for its movies.
The service picked up CODA at Sundance, but it was a big gamble for them. Streamers so far haven't done very well with Academy when it comes to winning. And CODA was released on August 13, 2021, considered a dead spot in the release calendar in pre-pandemic times. It opened in cinemas, but not many of them. It was not discussed much. If it grabbed some Guild Awards, maybe indie spirit, that would be incredible.
It is difficult to say what happened, but you can guess by looking at the calendar. The film's fortunes changed when, in late February, the film won the award for its ensemble cast. Kotsur won for his performance that night as well, and began taking in awards: a BAFTA, a Critics' Choice, an indie spirit. And by the weekend before the Oscars, when the film won Best Adapted Screenplay from the Writers Guild and the top award from the Producers Guild, it started to look like the short film that could actually be a snowball was starting to barrel down the hill. .
Besides, it's just... really cool to see. It's got a loving and imperfect family, a teenager with big dreams, and some tearful moments. Never discount the power of a film that leaves people feeling a little bummed by the end and feeling like they're contributing to an overlooked issue—in this case, navigating a world highly biased toward hearing deaf people. There may be difficulties in doing so. , If voters hadn't watched the film when it came out, a flurry of awards would have caught their attention — and it might have seemed like a great option, especially for those who may have grown tired of the discourse surrounding other movies.
Whether it deserves the award is another question. There's a lot to love about CODA, which feels, in many ways, the kind of movie you might see at Sundance any day or, these days, on a streaming service. It is minor. It is about ordinary people leading a normal life. It has some songs, and lessons, and a good heart.
On the other hand, it's hard to see how it fits into the Best Picture category. The Academy respects the films it sees as representative of the past year in film. The Best Picture winner is the film that has the largest voting body in Hollywood, made up entirely of people who are working at the highest levels in the film industry, who want to move forward as the best group, what do we do? Can do this as an example.
It's also hard to square off CODA perfectly with that term. It's got some major weak spots (notably Eugenio Derbez, whose performance as a music teacher feels completely out of place) and is quirky, and as steady, confident, and edgy as any other film nominated in that category. Doesn't feel confident.
The fact that it prevails may have had something to do with WackaDood that the Academy votes for Best Picture, which awards films to award winnings. In recent years, with changes in the demographic makeup of the Academy and movies like Moonlight and Parasite (and even The Shape of Water), some of this has changed. But CODA feels like the kind of film most people can agree on, and that helps it stand out.
CODA straddles that line between uncertainty and safety and is perhaps only a small part of a message for industry decision makers. Yes, this is a movie that most people will watch on their TV, not the theatre. But not long after independent production was completed, Apple TV+ paid too much money to get it there.
It is also a film that has placed enough value on the deaf community to bring forth some of the problems they face when they see a film, especially in theatre, and deliberately find ways to protest it. It's not an original story (it ultimately won Best Adapted Screenplay), but it's not based on the IP that would be familiar to its audience. You can read the respect given by the Academy as a message to the studio: You may not make that much money from these movies, but we want them nonetheless.
Is that enough for the studio to hear? Sadly, probably not. But as representative of the topsy-turvy film year, in a topsy-turvy world handed out at the remarkably topsy-turvy Oscars, it can't be half bad. It may not exactly be the best film of 2021, but CODA's Best Picture win may mean the best.