Another Take: ReelBob: ‘CODA’ ★★★½
This heartwarming and heartbreaking movie about family, choices and finding your own voice is one of the best movies of the year.
A duet by members of a high-school choir is underway when all goes silent.
The scene switches from the students on stage to the parents of one of them in the audience.
The father of the girl singer looks around, noting the emotional reactions of those around him — and he realizes his daughter’s voice is touching these people.
That is one of several touching and splendid moments in “CODA,” writer-director Siân Heder’s dramedy about a Gloucester, MA, fishing family.
CODA is an acronym for child of deaf adult(s). In this case, it is Ruby Rossi (newcomer Emilia Jones). Though she is the youngest member of the Rossi clan, the burden of being its spokesperson has fallen on her shoulders.
Unlike her parents, Frank (Troy Kotsur) and Jackie (Academy Award-winner Marlee Matlin) and her brother, Leo (Daniel Durant), Ruby can hear. Thus, she is the conduit between her parents’ and the outside hearing world.
“CODA” is a movie overflowing with heart and love. And Heder doesn’t pander by using the family’s deafness as a tool for pity or understanding.
The Rossis are a rowdy bunch — they are profane, judgmental, loving and fiercely independent.
The Rossis are fishermen. Fishing is an industry slowly dying under the weight of rising costs and federal regulations. Still, the family persists and scrapes by.
The movie’s main character is Ruby. Life has not been easy for her. Since early childhood — and now in high school — she has had to endure the cruel jibes of classmates, who openly mock her parents. Even as a senior, Ruby walks the school halls usually with her head down and her antenna on alert.
The weight of it all wears on her. Ruby’s only release is singing, which she does anywhere she can — on her father’s fishing boat, in her room or on an isolated cliffside by the water.
On a whim, she joins the high school choir, where the teacher, Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez), realizes that Ruby has a superb singing voice. He begins coaching her, encouraging her to apply to Boston’s Berklee School of Music.
The film’s tension rests in the expectations of Frank and Jackie about Ruby’s future.
When Ruby tries to explain to her mother about her love of singing, Jackie asks, “If we were blind, would you want to paint?” (All these conversations, by the way, are in American Sign Language — and subtitles are used).
Still, Ruby tries to balance her life — school, her music and her parents’ reliance on her voice — until it becomes too much for the teenager.
She breaks, telling her parents that she will not go to college, but stay home, work with them and help them.
“CODA” features some poignant moments that tear at your insides. Ruby asks her mother if she wished her daughter had been born deaf. Jackie frankly admits that at first, yes. She tells Ruby that she was afraid of the challenges or pitfalls of raising a hearing daughter.
She did not want Ruby to think she was a bad mom, to which Ruby jokingly and lovingly responds that Jackie is a “bad mom.”
The conflict between Ruby and Leo is another issue. Leo, as the older sibling, feels taken for granted. Because he is deaf, he believes Frank and Jackie overlook his intelligence and suggestions, and they rely too much on Ruby for help and advice.
He resents Ruby because it stifles his voice.
Heder’s use of sound — or the lack thereof — is another of the movie’s attractions. At some key moments, the film is totally quiet, putting us in the world of the Rossis.
A nice diversion is the budding romance between Ruby and Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), her duet singing partner. It’s another load piled on Ruby.
The performances are outstanding. Jones is amazing. You simultaneously admire and feel for her.
Matlin is resolutely protective of her family, while Kotsur is funny, bawdy and wisely insightful as Frank.
“CODA” is one of the best movies of the year. Come awards season, it should be in the top echelon of talked-about features.
It is a movie that should be seen — whether in theaters or on Apple TV+. “CODA” will make you laugh and weep. It showcases the strength and resilience of family and all that it entails.
I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. I review movies, 4K UHD, Blu-rays and DVDs for ReelBob (ReelBob.com), The Film Yap and other print and online publications. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com. You also can follow me on Twitter @ReelBobBloom and on Facebook at ReelBob.com or the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My movie reviews also can be found at Rotten Tomatoes: www.rottentomatoes.com.
CODA
3½ stars out of 4
(PG-13), sexual content, language, drug use
