CODA warms the heart in any language

For those who say ‘they don’t make movies like they used to” I say check out CODA, a tear-jerking and heart-warming family drama on Apple TV Marlee Matlin. Troy Kotsur, and Daniel Durant are deaf actors with regional theater, Broadway, and Hollywood credits to spare. Their collective portrayal of a powerful, close-knit, yet isolated family is terrific.

Emilia Jones has a breakout role as Ruby, the CODA, a child of deaf adults. And while the entire family struggles to make rent as a mom-and-pop fishing concern, Ruby has discovered that music is her calling.

Writer/director Sian Heder has crafted a vehicle that is taut in every way, not only as a family drama, but as a showdown between hearing and deaf communities, small business versus corporations, and silence versus sound. The scenes where Ruby’s family attend her concert and music school audition are glorious, as they try to comprehend her joy they cannot hear. The fact that Ruby’s audition song is Joni Mitchell’s classic ‘Both Sides Now’ is icing on a very delicious cake.

I hope this film receives lots of attention, and I hope it will continue a trend of greater acceptance of actors with differing abilities to be cast in starring roles.