OnScreen Review: "Coda"

In 2017, I worked with actress Amelia Hensley on an OnStage op-ed entitled “Hollywood & Broadway, Stop Overlooking Deaf Actors for Deaf Roles.” In it, she called for a more accurate representation of the deaf community in media and more opportunities for deaf actors. “Being deaf is more than just an acting exercise,” she wrote about watching Julianne Moore play a deaf woman in Todd Haynes’ “Wonderstruck,” “we [deaf actors] continue to be overlooked…we are right here, ready to give it our all.”

While there are still many strides to be made, since that article was published, deaf actor Russell Harvard has appeared twice on Broadway in traditionally hearing roles, while recently we’ve seen multiple major films with deaf leads, including Millicent Simmons’ star-making turn in “A Quiet Place Part II.” The other film would be Oscar-winner “Sound of Metal,” which used ingenious sound design (and a terrific performance from Riz Ahmed) in service of a story about hearing loss. Now comes Sundance darling “CODA,” which also features a hearing protagonist who uses music to cope with being stuck between the world of the deaf and the hearing.

While “CODA” is a more conventional film than “Metal” – perhaps to its detriment – it carves out its own niche with some very likable leads and a (mostly) fresh spin on the coming-of-age story. Loosely adapting from the French film “La Famille Bélier,” writer-director Sian Heder (whose past credits include “Tallulah,” “Orange Is The New Black” and a charming episode of Apple TV’s “Little America), “CODA” follows the Rossi family of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Like many who live in the working-class New England town, Frank (Troy Kotsur, stealing every scene he’s in) and his son Leo (Daniel Durant of Broadway’s “Spring Awakening”) come from a long line of devoted fishermen. But while daughter Ruby (tremendously gifted newcomer Emilia Jones) joins her dad and brother on the boat nearly every morning before high school, it’s not because she loves the sea. As per the coast’s rules, she needs to be there. Ruby is the only member of her family who can hear radio calls and alarms. She is the titular CODA, a child of deaf adults.

What Ruby loves to do is sing, a hobby she practices in her room where no one can hear her. But when she impulsively decides to join the school choir with her best friend Gertie (Amy Forsyth), Ruby starts to realize that music may be a way out of her small town where everyone knows her as just “that girl from the deaf family.” That is if she can muster up the courage to leave her loving family – who rely on her for interpretation and with the family trade.

“CODA” is a very winsome, charming film. I largely balk when the term “feel-good” is used to describe a movie, but here it is warranted. While it has many of the trappings of a typical coming-of-age high school film, Heder doesn’t frame her scenes with a glossy Instagram filter. Ruby are her friends feel like real teenagers, which seems like damning with faint praise but isn’t. Ruby, her classmates, and her choir duet partner Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Paelo) are not the suave, fashionable, confident, and horned up teenagers we often see in schlock like “The Kissing Booth.” It’s refreshing. The choir actually performs at the level of a high school choir and even the sets feel lived-in and shabby in a way you don’t often see in films like this.

While this is Ruby’s film, her parents are “CODA’s” MVPs. Kotsur and Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin (playing his loving wife Jackie) have terrific chemistry. A running gag that involves the couple’s frequent and very noisy lovemaking may sound cringe-worthy on paper but is handled with such a deft, affectionate touch and comedic flair that it never feels like a cheap laugh. It even culminates in the film’s biggest laugh, a play on the sitcom staple where parents sit their teenager’s date down for a sex talk.

But Kotsur and Matlin also have some beautiful, emotional moments to play too, including a scene late in the film where Ruby asks her mom if she wished she was deaf too. Perhaps my favorite scene of the entire film is one of the simplest where Frank asks his daughter to sing for him. They sit outside and Frank reaches up his hands to feel the sounds coursing through his daughter’s neck. He doesn’t say or sign a word – he doesn’t have to. Kotsur creates a monologue with just his eyes. It’s just first-class work. It mirrors the film’s other best moment where Ruby’s high-strung but caring music teacher Mr. V (Eugenio Derbez) asks her what she feels like when she sings. She thinks for a long minute and then signs her answer. There’s no score, no subtitles. She trusts the audience to understand what Ruby’s feeling. It’s magical.

Much to her credit, Seder lets these scenes – the finely drawn characters, the expressive ASL – speak for itself without drowning us in underscoring or unnecessary edits. She doesn’t observe the Rossi family from a distance but films them with warmth and familiarity. The family’s deafness is written the way “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” observes Greeks. It is their culture, their language. There is cross-cultural foibles, for sure, but Heder never falls into the trap of making their deafness the family’s most defining feature. They are hard-working, smart and profane, amorous and moody. They’re far the best part of the film.

And yet. Seder and her cast do so much right that it feels like a let-down when the film eventually gets smothered by its accumulating cliches. There’s another pass at the script that leans away from the formulaic structure – one that culminates in a contrived big audition – and focuses more on family dynamics. The plot thread about how the Rossis’ deafness impacts their business and standing in the community is perhaps the film’s most interesting but is overshadowed by a  girl-trying-to-find-her-voice storyline we’ve seen over and over again. It’s a plot device that was handled with much more finesse in “Unorthodox.” At least the metaphor of Ruby’s singing ability, apt but worn-out, is winked at by Jackie (“You’re a teenager,” she says, “if I was blind, would you want to paint?”). But does Ruby really need to sing “Both Sides Now” as her audition piece? Are we really to believe that she’s ready for Berkeley after a few singing lessons? It all unfolds a little too quickly and predictably, culminating in a pat, neat ending.

Less generic histrionics and a more Chloe Zhao-style verité approach, where we could just watch the Rossi family go about their lives, would have made this movie stand out more. As is, “CODA” is a wonderful showcase for Jones, Kotsur, Matlin, and Durant and will hopefully inspire more filmmakers to tell deaf stories on screen – especially ones where deafness isn’t an obstacle to overcome. “CODA” has a beautiful, well-intentioned voice. But the song it’s singing is a reorchestrated cover – some new runs here, a new arrangement there – rather than the wholly original song it could have been.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

“CODA” is currently streaming on Apple TV and in select theaters.