CODA: The Story We Didn’t Know We Needed
CODA winning Best Oscar may upset cinephiles but historians are licking their chops.
“Blindness cuts us off from things; deafness cuts us off from people…to be cut off from hearing [people] is to be isolated indeed.” — Helen Keller.
A heart warming film — brimming with hope of life and family — that works through the pain and grief of social isolation, winning Best Picture after our society has endured two years of an isolation no one could have really imagined 25 months ago, is so revealing about the state our society is in — one of raw, overwhelmed vulnerability — as to almost be cliche.
A movie with such an ending certainly wouldn’t win best adapted screenplay, or would it?
And all along, at the film’s center, the haunting beauty of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell telling us what we all need to hear/read, what we all want to say/sign to the people we love: you’re all I need to get by.
Speaking of the haunting beauty of Marvin Gaye, I never miss a chance to share his solo vocal of “Grapevine”. It stays with you, like so many stories of loss and love.
