Reel Life: The Sound of Silence

The 94th Academy Awards will go down in history for the unseemly Will Smith-Chris Rock Slapgate incident. But it was historic in another heart warming way which would need to be reiterated consistently in the years to come.

When Sian Heder’s CODA took three awards—for the best picture, the best supporting actor and best adapted screenplay—it was a significant moment. However, neither for being the first film to get a best film Oscar for a streaming service (AppleTV+), nor for being the first Sundance Film Festival top prize winner to get the coveted trophy.

CODA posted a landmark for being the first film with a predominantly deaf cast to win the best picture award. Troy Kotsur became the first deaf male actor to win best supporting actor trophy. Incidentally, Kotsur’s co-star in CODA, Marlee Matlin is the first deaf actor to have received the award for her performance in Children of a Lesser God (1986).

CODA did polarise people and there were conflicting views aplenty on its merits as a film. A section of cineastes considers the “sweet” film’s big win as a “sympathy vote” in a year when there were several better, more deserving titles. Some others think the film’s overarching “family feeling” and the bittersweet, life-affirming element worked like a magic potion in the strife-torn pandemic times.

What can’t be disputed is the fact the award for CODA is a nod to inclusivity and an acknowledgment of the deaf culture. “A powerful representation of the deaf community to audiences”, is how Zack Van Amburg, Apple’s head of Worldwide Video, described it, appreciating it for “breaking so many barriers in the process”. It helps bring inclusion and accessibility to the forefront, said Jamie Erlicht, Apple’s head of Worldwide Video.

In his acceptance speech Kotsur dedicated the win to the deaf community, the CODA community, as well as the disabled community. “This is our moment.”

CODA means “child of deaf adults”. Based on the 2014 French-Belgian film La Famille Bélier, it is about the dilemmas of teenaged Ruby Rossi, the only hearing member in a deaf family, who finds herself caught between her passion for music and her loyalty to her parents and sibling, her commitment to helping with their struggling fishing business and looking after the overall welfare.

Indian film fans have been quick in finding similarities with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 1996 directorial debut, Khamoshi: The Musical with Manisha Koirala as the musically gifted daughter of the deaf-mute couple, Nana Patekar and Seema Biswas. A German film, Beyond Silence, that released later in the same year, seemed to have a similar cluster of characters as well. Incidentally, while Khamoshi won the Filmfare critics award for best film, Beyond Silence was nominated for the best foreign language film at the 70th Academy Awards.

But the corelations and parallels aside, the trajectories and plot points in these four films take their own routes. And, what sets CODA truly apart is that unlike a Nana or a Seema in Khamoshi, the hearing-impaired characters are played by deaf actors—Kotsur and Matlin among others—themselves. It’s like claiming a right to their own stories, telling it their own way, a reason why it rings more real and organic than the dramatic fantasies or wish fulfilment we are used to seeing on screen. It’s about living than acting.

The discussion centred on these four films took me back to a Hindi film from 1972, Gulzar’s Koshish. When we, the society and the world at large, had not turned as aware and conscientious as we supposedly are now, this film, in its own unique way, tried to shed light on the day-to-day struggles of a deaf and mute couple Arti and Hari, played by Jaya Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar.

It’s heart-warming to see sign language at play in the opening credits itself with images of hands saying what voice or eyes can’t communicate, gestures speaking more than words. From a good-for-nothing, thief of a brother to roadside romeos, Arti has to deal with a lot but is ever cheerful with her mother as a solid support. After a chance encounter at the grocers, Hari becomes a confidante, friend, ally and much more.

A long sequence set in an institution for the deaf and mute, stresses on the importance of education for the differently abled, but the film manages to perch well between this overt messaging, moments of mirth, drama and sentiments.

There are tender scenes of courtship and romance and an emotional wringer of a sequence where the couple wonders if their newborn son is also deaf and mute like them. It’s about their insecurities and vulnerabilities in life, some deeply internalised because of their condition, and how they can render them and their kid helpless. But Koshish is also about how they can find a way around every trouble, often with the help of another challenged person. Like the novel way in which they bring up their kid with the help of a sightless man Narayan (Om Shivpuri).

Much like the other films, Koshish also eventually finds itself pivoted on a decisive juncture where the destinies of the challenged and the supposedly “normal” intersect and collide. Will Hari and Arti’s son marry a deaf and mute girl? Or will he chart out his own destiny without having to bear the burden of his parents’ condition? It’s a dilemma like that of the Rossi family of CODA. But the resolution is a little too virtuous, propitiatory and convenient.

Inspired from the 1961 Japanese film Happiness of Us Alone, Koshish casts its own fresh eye on the subject. It champions for the inclusion of the differently abled in the society and led to a Tamil remake in 1977— Uyarndhavargal—starring Kamal Haasan. Looking back, it might seem too straight, simple and easily self-righteous given today’s complicated realities but that can’t make one overlook the fact that Koshish did manage to raise a significant issue in its own genuine, honest and emotional way when the world was yet to turn woke with a vengeance.

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)