In CODA, Coming of Age in a Deaf Family Finds Moving Drama in a Familiar Refrain
Sometimes a movie so successfully plunges you into its world that it completely engulfs you in a lived-in experience. From the gorgeous, scenic opening moments of CODA, you can almost smell the Atlantic salt air and pungent scent of the daily catch. The movie transports you to Gloucester, Massachusetts and lovingly drops you into the life of one family.
Seventeen-year-old Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) is what the title of the movie refers to—a child of deaf adults. She is the only hearing member of her immediate family. A senior in high school, Ruby lives with mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin), father Frank (Troy Kotsur) and older brother Leo (Daniel Durant). Every morning before school even begins, Ruby works with her brother and father on their fishing boat off the coast. As the family’s sole interpreter, they have come to rely on her, and she feels the weight of familial responsibility more than most high schoolers.
When Ruby joins the school choir, her teacher Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez) notices that Ruby has a unique vocal talent. “There are plenty of pretty voices with nothing to say. Do you have something to say?” he asks. He works with her and encourages her to apply to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, a move that would take her away from the family that not only loves but desperately needs her. On the surface, this coming-of-age story is that simple and straightforward. But writer/director Sian Heder weaves a beautiful, nuanced and complex tale buoyed by delicate and deft performances.
Although specifically about a Deaf family, the story of a child wanting to form her own identity outside of her parents is universally relatable. “I’ve never done anything without my family before,” Ruby tells Bernardo. The growing pains as a child leaves home and a parents’ reluctance to let her go are quite literally tales as old as time.
CODA, which won four prizes at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival including the U.S. Grand Jury Prize, refuses to make Jackie, Frank or Leo one-dimensional saints which movies about people with disabilities do far too often. Jackie and Frank have clearly relied on Ruby too much. They even need her to go to intimate doctor appointments with them so she can very uncomfortably act as a translator. When Ruby tells her mom she loves to sing, Jackie dismisses it as some adolescent act of rebellion. “If I was blind, would you want to paint?” she scoffs. Leo loves his sister but cruelly refers to her as “Saint Ruby” and resents that his parents think they need her to survive. “Our family was fine before you were born,” he tells her during one contentious argument. Both comments are such punches in the gut they will leave you reeling.