CODA

So….I was able to see an online advanced screening of CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) which is available on AppleTV this Friday. As you can mostly tell from the title, this is a story about a 17 year old girl (Ruby Rossi, played brilliantly by Emilia Jones) who is the sole hearing member of a deaf family, as her father, mother, and brother are all completely hearing impaired.

Ruby works with her father and brother early in the morning out on their fishing boat and then proceeds to go to high school right after. She ends up being the target of high school bullies between smelling like fish in the morning and being in a completely deaf family. Ruby decides on the spur of the moment to sign up for choir because she loves to sing, which her family never knew or even could know.

Her school’s choir is run by Bernardo Villalobos, played by the always enthralling Eugenio Derbez. “Mr. V” is that perfect mix of a tough teacher that also goes above and beyond to nurture talent when he sees it. Ruby’s first interaction with Mr. V is quite embarrassing when all he wanted everyone in choir to do was sing the beginning to “Happy Birthday” solo, just to gauge who was an alto or a tenor.

Without going further into the story, and possibly giving away things that happen, I wanted to give attention to Ruby’s family. Her father, mother, and brother were played, respectively, by Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin, and Daniel Durant. Why do I want to give attention to these three? All three deaf members of Ruby’s family were played by real life deaf actors, giving that full authenticity factor! Watching the movie, you start to realize that the family was really good at ASL and mannerisms that a deaf person would exhibit, because that’s how these actors live life every day. Marlee Matlin is easily the most well-known of these actors, as she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Children of a Lesser God in her film debut.

CODA premiered, virtually, at the Sundance Film Festival back in January 2021 and ended up winning more awards than any other film in Sundance history. This created a bidding war between Netflix, Amazon, Searchlight, and Apple, who ultimately won worldwide distribution rights and is releasing the movie on AppleTV and in select theaters this Friday. So if you want to watch a movie with a mix of drama, music/singing, some comedy sprinkled in, and will also bring tears to your eyes at certain parts, make an effort to catch this either in your local theater where applicable or on AppleTV!