Oscars 2022: Why Troy Kotsur’s affecting performance in CODA should make him a frontrunner-Entertainment News , Firstpost


Watching Troy Kotsur in CODA is like coming face-to-face with what it really means to act, and just how small a part dialogue plays in the grammar of acting.

Troy Kotsur, the 53-year-old veteran stage actor, delivered one of the year’s most affecting performances in Sian Helder’s charming CODA. The awards and nominations that he has racked up for his turn as Frank Rossi — a deaf fisherman struggling to contend with the dreams of his teenage daughter, the only hearing member of the family — is proof enough. 

In November, Kotsur picked up Outstanding Supporting Performance at the Gotham Awards, defeating co-star Marlee Matlin, Ruth Nega of Passing, Jessie Buckley of The Lost Daughter, and Gaby Hoffman of C’mon C’mon among others. Kotsur followed that up with another win at the Screen Actors Guild in February, making history as the first deaf actor to win an individual prize. In between, he became the first deaf man to earn an Oscar nomination. And last week, the actor continued his award run at the Independent Spirit Awards, winning in the Best Supporting Actor [Male] category.

In an interview after his Oscar nomination, Kotsur called the recognition “healing.” An Oscar win [incidentally, Matlin, Kotsur’s co-star, was the first deaf performer to win an Academy award back in 1987] would certainly be a pretty memorable way to bookend to a fairytale award season run. But more than anything, I would argue that it would make a case for Kotsur’s supporting turn being as rock-solid as any lead performance in the last year.

Debuting at the 2021 edition of Sundance Film Festival, CODA [which stands for Child of Deaf Adults] garnered unanimous critical acclaim, and snagged the four top awards of the festival: Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award, Directing Award, and US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble. Then, Apple acquired CODA at Sundance for a record-making $25 million, putting their weight behind ensuring that the film got a theatre run before streaming on Apple TV+ in August last year. Today, the film [up for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actor] is a notable Oscar contender. In many ways, the film broke out the same way Kotsur did — slowly and then all at once.

Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur, Marlee Maitlin, and Daniel Durant in CODA

An English remake of  the 2014 French dramedy La Famille Bélier, CODA tracks the coming-of-age of the Rossi family who live in Gloucester, a seaside town in Massachusetts. Seventeen-year-old Ruby [newcomer Emilia Jones] is the only hearing member of her deaf family that includes her mother Jackie [Matlin], a former beauty queen, older brother Leo [Daniel Durant], and father Frank [Kotsur]. For her entire life, Ruby has acted like the bridge between her family and the rest of the world, translating their wishes to reality while interpreting the rules of society to them. Their family-owned fishing business is similarly dependent on Ruby, and Frank expects her to join the business after completing high school, neglecting to think that she might want to have a life completely untethered to them. Ruby, on her part, never came to consider the possibility of having an identity completely divorced from being her family’s protector until she discovers her secret talent for singing. As she readies up to apply for a spot at Berklee School of Music, a move that would prompt her to leave home, familial resentment, divides, and affections are put to test.

Indeed, the central conflict of the film remains between father and daughter. For someone who has been othered his entire life because of his handicap, Frank reads his daughter’s insistence on asserting her individuality as a way of her abandoning them. It does not help that Ruby’s passion lies in music — a vocation that her deaf family can never fully be a part of [“If I was blind, would you want to paint?” Jackie asks Ruby in one scene, her words stinging with resentment]. That in turn, prevents Frank from really wanting to understand just how much it means to his daughter to be able to find her life’s high notes.

Oscars 2022 Why Troy Kotsurs affecting performance in CODA should make him a frontrunner

Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur, and Marlee Maitlin

With his long face, lanky frame, and goofy smile, Kotsur plays the stubborn patriarch struggling with the dual pressures of keeping his family together and his business afloat with a quiet force. In any other movie, Frank a gruff stoner who cannot keep his hands off his wife might have ended up as a tired cliché. But Kotsur turns Frank into a heartrending portrait of resilience — of someone who never gives up even when the world is out to shortchange people like him. The actor’s world-weary face, all creases and wrinkles, become their own cinematic language, articulating a lifetime of someone who has always had to look over their shoulder. He sees his family’s co-dependence as a badge of honour; as a reminder that even when society isolates them, they belong to each other. In that, Kotsur turns Frank into the screen-dad we do not often see in our movies, eschewing aggressive masculinity in favour of locating a rueful tenderness. 

It is impossible to talk about the magical rewards of Kotsur’s performance without talking about the standout climactic scene. Under a starlit sky, Frank finds Ruby alone for a moment. They sit next to each other in Frank’s pickup truck, and he asks his daughter to sing for him. To “hear” her sing, he longingly holds up his hand to her vocal chords to feel the reverberations on her neck. Kotsur is beautifully understated in this moment, his affection-soaked face slowly morphing into a look of pride that is bound to result in goosebumps. It is possibly the best coming-of-age scene that I have seen in recent times, one that underlines with a piercing clarity that being able to hear and being willing to listen are two entirely different things. 

Oscars 2022 Why Troy Kotsurs affecting performance in CODA should make him a frontrunner

Still from CODA

Helder employs sign language as the de-facto mode of communication for the three deaf protagonists of the film, which is to say that CODA is not the kind of film where hearing-abled characters speak on behalf of their deaf counterparts. That also means that the film features large portions that unfold in complete silence — when Frank, Jackie, and Leo talk in ASL to each other or to Ruby, the screen fills only with subtitles. Helder treats signage like a character, and Kotsur revels in it.

In Frank, a magnetic Kotsur offers Hollywood a reference point for the full throttled expressive power of sign language. The actor “performs” — in the truest sense of the word — with every bone in his body; his evocative eyes and colourful hand gestures convey every beat of the film’s varying emotions with rich detail, at times even going beyond the written word. The actor hits every note that an emotionally resonant lead performance is traditionally expected to conquer in a movie, generously elevating a viewer’s reading of the film.

In fact, watching Kotsur in CODA is like coming face-to-face with what it really means to act, and just how small a part dialogue plays in the grammar of acting. 

It becomes even more poetic considering the parallels between Frank and the actor. Like Frank, Kotsur knows a thing or two about being made to feel like he is not enough. The actor spent decades auditioning for movies where he was essentially passed over for roles in favour of actors who could speak. For a long time, Kotsur, who found meatier parts on stage than in film or television, was a victim of a mentality that mistook the ability of an actor to read a line of dialogue with their ability to emote. That years later, Kotsur gloriously breaks that myth in CODA, a movie willing to negotiate with an underrepresented community on their own terms, is reason enough to celebrate. Of course, an Oscar would be a fitting coda to Kotsur’s time in the spotlight.

Oscars 2022 will take place on 28 March.

Oscars 2022 Why Troy Kotsurs affecting performance in CODA should make him a frontrunner

Oscars 2022. Illustration by Poorti Purohit

Poulomi Das is a film and culture writer, critic, and programmer. Follow more of her writing on Twitter.

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