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At first glance, you might think that writer/director Sian Heder ’s “CODA” is all about predictable beats you’ve seen countless times before. After all, it tells a pleasantly familiar coming-of-age tale, following a talented small-town girl from modest means with dreams to study music in the big city. There's an idealistic teacher, a winsome crush, moving rehearsal montages, a high-stakes audition, and naturally, a family reluctant about their offspring’s ambitions. Again—and only at first glance—you might think you already know everything about this feel-good recipe.

Caring, boisterous, and adorned with the hugest of hearts, “CODA” will prove you wrong. It’s not that Heder doesn’t embrace the aforesaid conventions for all their comforting worth—she does. But by twisting the formula and placing this recognizable story inside a new, perhaps even groundbreaking setting with such loving, acutely observed specificity, she pulls off nothing short of a heartwarming miracle with her film, the title of which is an acronym: Child of Deaf Adult. Played by the exceptional Emilia Jones (who is blessed with Grade-A pipes), the gifted young girl in question here happens to be one, navigating the intricacies of her identity, passions, and familial expectations, trying to reconcile them without hurting anyone’s feelings, her own included.

Admittedly, “CODA” is adapted from the French film “La Famille Bélier,” so the idea of it isn’t entirely novel. What’s new here—and it makes all the difference in the world—is the cast. While the family in the well-meaning original were played by hearing cast members (with the exception of the brother brought to life by deaf actor Luca Gelberg), they are all portrayed by real-life deaf performers in Heder’s movie—a sensational group consisting of legendary Oscar winner Marlee Matlin , scene-stealing Troy Kotsur and Daniel Durant —infusing her adaptation with a rare, inherent kind of authenticity.

Jones is the 17-year-old Ruby, a hardworking high-schooler in the coastal Cape Ann’s Gloucester who habitually wakes up at the crack of dawn every day to help her family—her father Frank (Kotsur) and brother Leo (Durant) and mother Jackie (Matlin)—at their boat and newly found fish sales business. Heder is quick to give us a realistic taste of Ruby’s routine. Accustomed to being her family’s sign-language-proficient interpreter out in the world as the only hearing member of the Rossi clan, she spends her days translating every scenario imaginable two ways: at town meetings, at the doctor’s office (one early instance of which plays for full-sized laughs thanks to Kotsur’s golden comedic chops) and at the boat where a hearing person must be present to notice the signals and coastal announcements.

What Ruby has feels so balanced and awe-inspiring that it takes a minute to recognize just how exhausting the whole arrangement is for the young girl, even though she makes it look easy with maturity and a sense of responsibility beyond her years. For starters, she is all too aware of everything private about her parents, often including their medical conditions and (to her riotous terror), sex life. When the hearing world becomes cruel or belittling, she steps in, almost with protective instincts, always prioritizing them over herself. But when Ruby joins the school choir and discovers her talent for singing, it throws off her balance and puts her at odds with her family, especially when she decides to apply to Boston’s Berklee College of Music, adopting a rehearsal schedule that often clashes with her duties in the family business. Complicating the matters further is a fellow singer and romantic interest named Miles ( Ferdia Walsh-Peelo from “ Sing Street ”), a shy kid with a genuine admiration for Ruby.

If there's one misstep here, it’s how far Heder leans into the inspiring teacher trope with Eugenio Derbez ’s Bernardo Villalobos, a character that somehow transmits a sitcom-y artificiality in an otherwise earnest movie. Derbez does what he can with a collection of cookie-cutter dialogue lines, but his scenes don’t always land with the same honesty we see elsewhere in “CODA.” Still, this lapse in judgment feels minor in a movie so affecting, so in touch with its old-fashioned crowd-pleaser character. (Had it actually played in a physical version of the Sundance 2021 instead of its virtual edition, this would have been the standing ovation story of the festival.) And plenty of other types of sincerity throughout “CODA” make up for it, from the way Heder portrays Cape Ann and the life around it through lived-in details, to how she honors the joys and anxieties of a working class family with candor and humor, without ever making them or their Deafness the butt of the joke.

Most of all, she makes us see and believe in our bones that the Rossis are a real family with real chemistry, with real bonds and trials of their own, both unique and universal just like any other family. What Ruby’s chosen path unearths is the distinctiveness of those everyday battles. Would her sound-driven talent put a distance between Ruby and the rest of the Rossis? What would the world look like for the quartet if Ruby chose to leave? Through a number of deeply generous (and to this critic, tear-jerking) scenes—but especially a pair that play like each other’s mirror images—Heder spells out the answers openhandedly. During one, all sound vanishes while Ruby sings in front of her nearest and dearest, making us perceive her act from the point of view of the non-hearing. During the other, featuring a well-chosen track that might just melt even the frostiest of hearts, sound doesn’t matter at all. Because Heder ensures that we see the boundless love that’s there, in their shared language.

On Apple TV+ today.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

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CODA (2021)

Rated PG-13 for strong sexual content and language, and drug use.

112 minutes

Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi

Eugenio Derbez as Bernardo Villalobos

Troy Kotsur as Frank Rossi

Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as Miles

Daniel Durant as Leo Rossi

Marlee Matlin as Jackie Rossi

Amy Forsyth as Gertie

Cinematographer

• Paula Huidobro
• Geraud Brisson
• Marius De Vries

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‘CODA’ Review: A Voice of Her Own

An openhearted embrace of deaf culture elevates this otherwise conventional tale of a talented teenager caught between ambition and loyalty.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

The template of “CODA” — the title is also a term used to describe the hearing children of deaf adults — might be wearyingly familiar, but this warmhearted drama from Sian Heder opens up space for concerns that feel fresh.

Ruby (Emilia Jones, delightful), a shy 17-year-old in Gloucester, Mass., is the lone hearing member of her rambunctious family. Between interpreting for her parents (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur), and helping run the family’s fishing boat with her father and older brother (Daniel Durant) each morning before school, Ruby is exhausted. Since childhood, she has been her family’s bridge to the hearing world; now, her newly awakened desire to sing is perhaps the one thing they will struggle most to understand.

Weighed down by a groaningly predictable plot — which includes a cute-boy crush, a colorful music teacher (Eugenio Derbez) and a climactic singing audition — “CODA” relishes the opportunity to showcase the expressiveness of sign language. (The film is extensively subtitled.) The actors work together seamlessly, the blue-collar coastal setting is richly realized and the family’s cohesiveness solidly established. And if some interactions move to the clichéd beats of a sitcom, Ruby’s efforts to share her musical talent (notably in one lovely scene with her father) are remarkably affecting.

More than once, Heder effectively flips the film’s viewpoint to that of her deaf characters (who are all played by deaf actors). At a school concert, the camera watches Ruby’s family in the audience as the soundtrack abruptly cuts out, allowing us to glimpse the sometimes blanketing isolation of a silent world. In moments like this, when the quippy dialogue subsides and the story relaxes, we see the ghost of a more fruitful movie, one that would rather surprise its viewers than feed them a formula they have come to expect.

CODA Rated PG-13 for unrestrained flatulence and a bawdy mime. In English and American Sign Language with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Watch on Apple + .

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Recent projections, delegate tracker, latest election news, review: 'coda' is an emotional powerhouse and one of the year's best movies.

Here’s the movie that restores the good name of the crowd-pleaser.

Here's the movie that restores the good name of the crowd-pleaser. You'll laugh, you'll cry and all steps in between at the funny, touching and vital "CODA," now in theaters and on Apple TV+. CODA stands for Children of Deaf Adults. It also represents the very best in family entertainment.

Having broken records with its $25 million sale at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, the Oscar-buzzy "CODA" also describes Ruby Rossi (breakout star Emilia Jones), a hearing Massachusetts high school student who lives with her mom (Marlee Matlin), dad (Troy Kotsur) and hotheaded brother (Daniel Durant), all deaf and all played by deaf actors.

Jones, a British acting and singing discovery, merges effortlessly into the role of an American teen growing up in a Gloucester fishing village. Ruby must, by necessity, act as an intermediary for her working-class family in the hearing world. The livelihood of her parents depends on it.

But what about Ruby's ambition to sing? When her choir teacher Bernardo Villalobos (a sweetly over-the-top Eugenio Derbez) urges her to try for a scholarship at Boston's competitive Berklee College of Music and pairs her with heartthrob duet partner Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo from "Sing Street"), romance and career start intruding on her role as family point person.

MORE: 'The Green Knight' review: Dev Patel deserves Oscar attention

The movie has great fun with mom and dad's rowdy sex life, especially when they use it to embarrass shy Ruby when she dares to bring home a boy. But Jones is tender and tough when she needs to be to show why the bond holds despite tension between Ruby and her family.

Still, the acting triumphs of "CODA" belong to the trio of deaf actors at its core. Hollywood has traditionally cast non-deaf performers in such roles. In the 2014 French film, "La Famille Bélier," on which "CODA" is based, both parents were played by hearing actors. Not this time.

Matlin, who won an Oscar at 21 for 1986's "Children of a Lesser God" (she's still the only deaf actor to do so) had the clout to insist on representational casting. She's a sparking livewire as Jackie, the loyal mom with an edge who calls other town wives "hearing bitches" and resents Ruby's music ("If I was blind, would you want to paint?").

MORE: Review: 'In the Heights' pure unleashed joy grabs you and never lets go

Ruby's brother Leo (an explosive Durant) is even more disgruntled when Ruby steps in to negotiate the best price at the fish market since Leo feels, rightly, that outsiders need to learn how to cope with his deaf family without cheating them in the process.

As Frank, Ruby's raucous dad, Kotsur is hilarious and heartbreaking. In one scene, he asks Ruby to sing just for him, placing his hands on her throat to feel the vibrations of her vocal cords in his fingers as she sings the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell classic, "You're All I Need to Get By."

If that moment doesn't bring you to tears, an earlier one will have you reaching for a tissue as the sound drops out at a concert in Ruby's school and we understand what the Rossi clan experiences when the audience applauds a musical performance they can't hear or share.

Download the all new "Popcorn With Peter Travers " podcasts on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Tunein , Google Play Music and Stitcher .

All praise to hearing writer-director Sian Heder, who learned American Sign Language to communicate with actors who give their soulful all. Not just with hand gestures, body language and facial expressions, but with the rare ability to connect heart to heart. However you say it or sign it, "CODA" is an emotional powerhouse and one of the year's best movies.

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‘coda’: film review | sundance 2021.

Sian Heder's film revolves around the tensions that arise when the sole hearing member of a deaf family discovers she has a talent for singing.

By Jon Frosch

Senior Editor, Reviews

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There are films that upend conventions and subvert expectations. And there are those that lean into them — hard. CODA , a U.S. remake of 2014 French dramedy La famille Bélier , about the sole hearing member of a deaf family who discovers she’s a gifted singer, is of the latter ilk. Even with its unusual premise (CODA is an acronym for “child of deaf adults”) and the representational novelty of three out of four leads being deaf — a notable difference from the original — the movie hardly feels like uncharted territory. CODA faithfully works its way through a checklist of tropes from high school comedies, disability dramas, musical-prodigy and inspiring-teacher narratives, coming-of-age tales about young people struggling to declare independence from overbearing families and indie chronicles of blue-collar America.

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But if you’re going to make a film that sticks to the playbook, or playbooks, this is how to do it: CODA is a radiant, deeply satisfying heartwarmer that more than embraces formula; it locates the pleasure and pureness in it, reminding us of the comforting, even cathartic, gratifications of a feel-good story well told.

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Dramatic Competition)

Cast: Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin, Daniel Durant, Eugenio Derbez, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Amy Forsyth

Writer-director: Sian Heder

That’s not to say the film offers nothing new. CODA ‘s focus on the fraught ties between deaf and hearing communities gives it a foundation of freshness. But one of writer-director Sian Heder’s most impressive feats is how shrewdly she handles the more familiar elements. Though all the expected plot points are present and accounted for — the school concert and conservatory audition, the first kiss, fights and heart-to-hearts — the filmmaker (whose debut feature, Tallulah , premiered at Sundance 2016) stages them with uncommon delicacy, flaunting a finely tuned sense of when to push, how much and when to pull back. You may roll your eyes. More likely, you’ll be wiping them.

Revolving around 17-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) and the tensions that arise when her passion for music pulls her away from her deaf parents and brother, CODA at times teeters toward unwieldiness. There’s a lot of plot, and tones that should, in theory, clash. (Think a deaf spin on Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace and Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty , passed through a John Hughes filter, or tossed into a blender with recent Netflix teen movies like The Half of It .) But the unfussy warmth and feeling of the performances and direction should overcome even the staunchest resistance. CODA is an honest crowd-pleaser — one that gently charms, rather than claws or cloys, its way under your skin. It deserves every happy-tear it wrings.

Ruby Rossi lives with mom Jackie ( Marlee Matlin ), dad Frank (Troy Kotsur) and big brother Leo (Daniel Durant) — all three deaf — in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she toggles tirelessly between school and her job as a deck hand on the family’s fishing boat. Though her ability to hear sets her apart from her parents and sibling, the four function as a unit; Ruby has been communicating in ASL since before she could speak, and acts as an interpreter for the other Rossis — their liaison to the hearing world.

Working from her own adapted screenplay, Heder establishes the dynamic between Ruby and her family — the push-pull of affection and aggravation, the blurring line between closeness and codependency — in a few crisp, inviting early scenes. CODA centers Ruby’s experience: We see her wince at the casual cacophony of a deaf household — the clanging pots and pans, the constant brrring of an un-silenced smartphone and, amusingly for those who appreciate an innocuous bit of scatological humor, an instance of unchecked flatulence. Yet Heder makes ample space in her frames for Jackie, Frank and Leo, too, catching their reactions and capturing their personalities. She brings this fractious but loving quartet, with their vibrant crisscross of signing, teasing and testiness, to vividly appealing life.

One day at school, Ruby sees her crush, popular Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), signing up for choir. Ruby also likes to sing — the opening scene finds her belting Etta James’ “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” as she works on the boat — so before long, she’s there alongside Miles, blossoming under the tutelage of demanding conductor Mr. V (Eugenio Derbez). Ruby’s so good, in fact, that Mr. V urges her to apply to Boston’s selective Berklee College of Music.

With his diva-ish antics (“I’m in a mood!” he snaps at the start of the first class) and tough-love quips, Mr. V is an unabashed caricature, and seasoned scenery-chomper Derbez at times seems to be acting in a different, more overtly sitcom-ish movie. (A running gag about Jackie and Frank’s off-the-charts sex life is similarly incongruous in its broadness.) But Heder keeps the choir scenes short, snappy and refreshingly free of earnest, Glee -style vocal histrionics; the kids’ voices are lovely in an everyday, not Broadway-brassy, kind of way (several are played by members of Berklee’s a cappella group).

The film’s primary interest is the aching distance that opens up between Ruby and her family as she nurtures her talent and contemplates a future beyond home. The conflict is partly logistical: As a hearing person, Ruby is a key component of the Rossis’ just-launched fish sales business; they literally may not be able to afford for her to go away to college. It also, of course, runs deeper than that. Music is something Ruby’s family can’t fully appreciate, and Jackie, in particular, feels that exclusion acutely (“If I was blind, would you want to paint?” she asks her daughter).

With a light touch and lived-in sensitivity, Heder and her cast conjure the storm of mixed emotions set off by Ruby’s singing: Ruby’s unconditional devotion to her family but also her resentment at never having been able to put herself first, and her guilt about doing so for the first time; her parents’ hurt commingled with pride in their daughter and yearning for her happiness; Leo’s seething frustration, his sense that he’s considered less important to the family’s well-being than his sister.

Heder has a low-key visual style, but knows how to turn up the pressure. The Rossis’ arguments are expertly choreographed and performed, the foursome’s expressions and gestures alive with long-pent-up anxieties and a fierce, protective love. Crucially, the filmmaker also keeps things moving, never lingering on dramatic scenes or pumping them up with unearned sentiment. This thoughtful underplaying of major moments extends both to Ruby’s budding romance with Miles, which unfolds with restrained sweetness, and to the big spring choir concert. Instead of delivering the usual bring-down-the-house climax, Heder considers the experience from the perspective of each family member, shifting seamlessly among them to create a mini roller coaster of apprehension, awkwardness, relief and delight. (She saves the real release for Ruby’s Berklee audition — a scene that turned this critic, who doesn’t cry easily at the movies, into a puddle.)

Though I can’t judge the authenticity of the film’s portrayal of majority-deaf families ( CODA clearly isn’t aiming for the realism of last year’s Sound of Metal , for example), the vitality and conviction of the lead turns are undeniable. Jones (Netflix’s Locke & Key ) acts and sings with a captivating directness — her voice is rich, melodic and natural-sounding — that feels apt for an adolescent who has long shouldered the responsibilities of adulthood. But she’s also subtle, suggesting an entire palette of moods in a character who’s never had the luxury of indulging them. It’s an intuitive, unshowy powerhouse of a performance.

The other principals are equally superb in economically but deftly drawn roles. With his long face, lanky frame and teasing eyes, Kotsur’s Frank is the family clown. But there’s more than a hint of ruefulness in his goofing around, and the actor has a moment of breathtaking sincerity toward the end of the film. He’s well matched with Matlin, summoning her customary spark, sensuality and nuance as a former model who has to work to connect with her no-frills daughter. And Durant brings a simmering, heartthrobby soulfulness to the restless Leo. (There’s a great, sneakily swoony scene in which Leo and Ruby’s best friend flirt at a bar, texting each other as a workaround for their communication barrier.)

Marius De Vries’ score is discreet and sparingly deployed, never overshadowing the singing by Ruby, Miles and the choir. And if a movie is going to feature multiple rehearsal scenes, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “You’re All I Need to Get By” and Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” are pretty unbeatable song choices. It’s no small compliment to say that CODA is worthy of them.

Full credits

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Dramatic Competition) Production companies: Vendome Pictures, Pathé Films, Picture Perfect Federation Cast: Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin, Daniel Durant, Eugenio Derbez, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Amy Forsyth Writer-director: Sian Heder Producers: Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, Patrick Wachsberger Executive producer: Sarah Borch-Jacobson Director of photography: Paula Huidobro Production designer: Diane Lederman Costume designer: Brenda Abbandandolo Editor: Geraud Brisson Composer: Marius De Vries Casting: Deborah Aquila, Tricia Wood, Lisa Zagoria Sales: ICM Partners, CAA

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CODA review: Tender coming-of-age Sundance drama earns its praise (and price)

This review initially ran out of the Sundance Film Festival in February 2021. CODA will be released Aug. 13 in theaters and on Apple TV+.

The Sundance Film Festival is still often a place for small unpolished gems. But CODA , which premiered there on Thursday night, is the kind of movie that seems to arrive fully formed — and has already been rewarded accordingly with by far the highest purchase price in Sundance history, $25 million by Apple TV+ . (Andy Samberg's existential rom-com Palm Springs set the record last year , with $17.5 million.)

Those staggering numbers seem at odds at first with the film's modest outlines — a classic coming-of-age tale, populated mostly by lesser-known actors and set in a small Massachusetts town. The charm in writer-director Sian Heder's breakout second feature is easy to find though, and much of it stems from the sweet specificity of her premise; British actress Emilia Jones (Netflix's Locke & Key ) stars as Ruby Rossi, the only hearing person in a deaf family.

The Rossis are a rowdy crew: Patriarch Frank (Troy Kotsur) and his grown son Leo (Daniel Durant), both tattooed brawlers, descend from a long line of local fishermen; they drink and smoke and make fart jokes, and when Frank's not on the boat, he's usually finding a way to have spectacularly noisy sex with his beloved wife, Jackie (Oscar winner Marlee Matlin ), a midlife sexpot in skinny jeans. Ruby rises every day at 3 a.m. to work alongside them, hauling in the daily catch before the sun is fully up. Then she pulls off her waders and heads to high school, where the mean girls make snide cracks about smelling fish when they pass her in the halls, and even her best friend Gertie (Amy Forsyth) can't understand why she wants to join something as deeply uncool as choir.

But music, which her family has no way of knowing — they can't hear her singing along to old Motown songs and Nina Simone while she works, or belting them out in her bedroom — is the thing that brings her the most joy.It also terrifies her though, so it takes a burgeoning crush on a classmate ( Sing Street 's Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) and the careful attentions of a teacher, Mr. Villalobos ( Eugenio Derbez ), to nudge her out of her skittish shell and closer toward the public performances she fears so much.

Heder, a writer and producer best known for her work on shows like Orange Is the New Black and Little America , never leaves any real doubt that Ruby will find her way when it comes to both first kisses and longer-range career plans. And CODA does often have the feel and scale less of big-screen moviemaking than of the television background she comes from, albeit expertly done (and with more than a few premium-cable profanities). But a handful of sitcom-ish moments seem like small glitches in a script that works so winningly to bring the often unseen (or just terminally under-explored) world of deafness to such joyful, ordinary life.

Jones — who trained intensively in voice work and American Sign Language for the role — has the gift of coming off like a genuine teenager, and more particularly a girl torn between her unique obligations to the people she loves and the bigger dreams she holds for herself. Matlin is great too, both tough and tenderhearted, though Durant and Kotsur deserve to be singled out for largely wordless performances that still convey so much in every scene: Anger, vulnerability, outrageous humor. Together, they somehow manage to make CODA feel like both the best and most familiar kind of family film, and one you've never quite seen before. Grade: B+

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Coda: Why this year’s feel-good favourite was the right Best Picture Oscar winner

In the chaos of awards season, the internet is starting to grasp wildly for the heroes and villains of this story. and it’d be wrong to dismiss cod’s best picture chances just because it’s a crowd-pleaser, writes clarisse loughrey.

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P eople love to argue about the Oscars , even when they’re not sure exactly what they’re arguing about. And awards season this year hasn’t exactly handed them a tidy narrative to work from – the biopics, like The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Spencer , are a little too self-aware to play as strictly conventional. The A-list-packed satire Don’t Look Up , and the lushly traditional musical West Side Story , fell by the wayside early on in the race.

Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast was the most obvious Oscar bait of the pack, but while Jane Campion’s meticulously directed western, The Power of the Dog, was an early frontrunner, it was Siân Heder’s Coda that ultimately walked away with Best Picture. Some saw this coming: the film had landed several crucial wins during the run-up to Oscars, including the Producers Guild and Screen Actors Guild. Coda , an honest and sincere drama about a hearing child in a deaf family, was something of an underdog when it first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021. The film received rapturous reviews and a healthy dollop of publicity, and walked away from Sundance with a record-breaking $25m acquisition deal with Apple TV+.

You’d think a surprise win like that would add some much-needed joy to a tumultuous, overall quite depressing, ceremony. But people are always looking for the heroes and villains to their story, and it seems like Heder’s film has become a prime target for a lot of the internet’s ire. And the backlash, for the most part, seems largely out of touch with the true, material impact of the Oscars. Ultimately, these awards don’t decide which individual films we remember in a decade’s, or two decades’, time. The Power of the Dog and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car will continue to be talked about in the ways they were talked about before. But they do frequently dictate the kinds of names, ideas, and faces Hollywood is willing to put its money behind.

It mattered when Parasite won, because it helped shake a little of the fear of subtitled films out of English-speaking audiences. It mattered that Chloé Zhao won for Nomadland , because it offered genuine hope that the barriers for women directors, and especially women of colour, were starting to break. And it matters that Coda won because of the doors it will open for other majority deaf casts.

It’s been frequently dismissed by commentators as a shallow crowd-pleaser, but the label only fits if you’re faithfully tied to the assumption that any expression of sentimentality should be equated automatically with naivete. There’s nothing slight or simplistic about Coda . The family at its centre – Frank (Troy Kotsur) and Jackie (Marlee Matlin) plus their kids Leo (Daniel Durant) and Ruby (Emilia Jones) – remain a stubborn, bubbling mess of conflicted desires and personal duties. Ruby wants to be a musician but, as the hearing child of deaf parents, positioned as their de facto interpreter, she worries that striking out on her own would sever one of their few concrete connections to hearing culture. Meanwhile, her father’s work in the fishing industry has come under threat of corporate interference, with 60 per cent of his catch now handed over to middlemen.

There’s nothing cutesy about the difficult choices these characters are forced to make between what they want and who they’ve dedicated themselves to. And Heder’s unfussy approach to the film allows her cast to craft a family dynamic that feels firmly grounded in experience, as they tease and argue, each gesture insulated by love. Coda allows its hearing audience only one moment of concession, as the sound cuts out midway through one of Ruby’s performances. Her parents, reading the micro-gestures and choked-back sobs of the other audience members, finally realise how gifted their daughter is. In a night where, as Best Actress winner Jessica Chastain remarked, the word “love” seemed to be commonly repeated – what could possibly be the harm in the Oscars wanting to reward something of that straightforward, emotional purity?

Find the full list of 2022 Oscar winners here . See the latest updates and reactions from the dramatic ceremony here , and read about the biggest talking points here .

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The movie ‘CODA’ reminds us that cliches sometimes work — and brilliantly

“You’ll laugh, you’ll cry” has become something of a cliche in the world of theater and movies, the kind of pull quote from a rave review that guarantees a full gamut of audience pleasure.

“CODA” is here to remind us that, as often as not, cliches are true — and sometimes happen to work. This formulaic coming-of-age comedy-drama, adapted from the 2014 French film “La Famille Belier,” pushes our buttons shamelessly, but also with enough sincerity, warmth and finesse to forestall accusations of rank manipulation. This is an old-fashioned movie that adheres to admittedly familiar principles of storytelling and emotional stakes, but by way of such a winning cast, evocative atmosphere and genuine tone that its impossible not to love. For audiences weary of superheroic bombast and worn out from puzzling through art house arcana, “CODA” is here to save the day. It’s sweet, funny, meaningful and accessible in precisely the right measure.

We meet Ruby (newcomer Emilia Jones) when she’s working on the family fishing boat with her dad Frank (Troy Kotsur) and brother Leo (Daniel Durant), singing her heart out to no one in particular. Frank and Leo are deaf, as is Ruby’s mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin). Ruby is a CODA — child of deaf adults — and as such, she is her household’s chief interpreter and go-between with the outside hearing world.

It’s a role in which she has excelled, but now that she’s a high school senior, with dreams of a singing career, she’s beginning to chafe under her family’s stifling combination of dependence and wildly unconditional love. The title of “CODA,” then, carries two meanings: More than being about deafness, this is a movie about bringing things to a graceful but necessary end.

Written and directed by Sian Heder, “CODA” possesses the sunny optimism of so many classics of the genre, a bracing look and feel that’s amplified by its setting in Gloucester, Mass. Jones brings an appealing mix of diffidence and forthrightness to Ruby, who must suffer Frank and Jackie’s unbridled approach to everything — especially their sex life, which becomes a running gag. Matlin and Kotsur have a blast leaning into their uninhibited characters, who are so used to being understood by their daughter that it rarely occurs to them to try to understand her.

In “CODA,” deafness is a part of life but not its all-defining feature: Heder has made a movie about the universal values of first love, family ties and the tug of an unknown future, within a highly specific but immediately comprehensible context. And she does not stint on the laughs: In addition to Frank and Jackie’s anarchic humor, “CODA” benefits from the presence of Ruby’s glee club coach Mr. Villalobos, a martinet with a heart of gold played with deadpan élan by Eugenio Derbez.

Did I say glee club? Yes I did, which means that in case “CODA” wasn’t adorable enough, it’s elevated by a bevy of fun musical numbers, the most winsome of which is a duet that Ruby rehearses with a dreamy schoolmate named Miles, played by Ferdia Walsh-Peelo. (Jones’s performance is all the more commendable considering that she’s British, had to learn American Sign Language for this role, and is possessed of a lovely, unaffected singing voice.)

Will Ruby and Miles ever kiss? Will Ruby nail the big audition to get into Berklee College of Music? Will Frank’s fishing business survive without the negotiating acumen of his daughter?

The audience knows that the answers to those questions are mostly preordained. But that doesn’t detract from “CODA’s” myriad joys, which have less to do with novelty than with the film’s simple, straightforward taste and a grounded sense of honesty. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the film’s climactic scene, an adroitly staged performance in which the feelings come fast and furious, each more contradictory than the last. You’ll laugh, all right. You’ll cry. You’ll do both at the same time. “CODA” is just that kind of movie. And thank goodness for it.

PG-13. At area theaters; also available on Apple TV Plus. Contains strong sexual elements and language, and drug use. 112 minutes.

CODA Review

13 Aug 2021

If you were going to ask AI to come up with an identikit Sundance break-out hit, it might well be CODA . The winner of the festival’s 2021 US Grand Jury Prize: Drama (it subsequently sold to Apple TV for $25 million), writer-director Siân Heder’s film mixes up Sundance-favourite elements — family shenanigans, salty laughs, rough-hewn filmmaking, big dramatic beats, a feelgood ending — to winning, if not quite Little Miss Sunshine , effect. If it strays too close to the predictable, CODA tackles the realities of living with deafness with authenticity (the Deaf characters are played by non-hearing actors), empathy and heart.

The title is an acronym for Children Of Deaf Adults. The ‘child’ is Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones, who learnt American Sign Language for the role), an ostracised teen helping her Deaf father Frank (Troy Kotsur) and brother Leo (Daniel Durant) during hardscrabble days working in the family fishing business in Gloucester, Massachusetts. When we first meet Ruby she is singing gospel on board the boat and, joining a school choir, it transpires she has a beautiful singing voice, so much so that music teacher Bernardo (Eugenio Derbez) recommends she try out for the prestigious Berklee College of Music.

There is a palpable sense of the ways deafness can bring a family closer together.

Based on the 2014 French flick La Famille Bélier , CODA proffers a familiar dynamic of family commitment versus following your dream. Heder works wonders with the family part, creating a textured, vibrant and thoroughly likeable clan. Kotsur is an earthy but caring dad with a penchant for hard rap and bad jokes (“Why do farts smell?” “So Deaf people can enjoy them too”); Matlin as mom Jackie is not above guilt-tripping her daughter, but shares her fears about motherhood in an effective late-in-the-day scene; Durant as forever-on-Tinder brother Leo neatly evinces the frustrations of being older but less trusted than his kid sister. Scenes at the dinner table are lively, Heder making a fun use of signing-with-subtitles for comedic effect (“Twat Waffle” is a particular highlight) and there is a palpable sense of the ways deafness can bring a family closer together.

The film is on less convincing ground when it focuses on Ruby pursuing her dreams. Derbez’s Bernardo, Ruby’s music mentor, is an ersatz caricature, a well-tailored cardigan dropping one-liners and supporting-character lovability. The story beats are well worn here — will Ruby miss rehearsals over translating for her family? Will she fall for choir partner Miles ( Sing Street ’s Ferdia Walsh-Peelo)? — but you are carried along by Jones’ performance. She gives Ruby vulnerabilities, warmth and a spark to make you care for the character’s well-worn dilemmas, suggesting both the weight of responsibility she carries and her need to find her own place in the world. By the time she comes to the inevitable big sing-off, it’s a hard heart that isn’t moved by her performance, cinema’s biggest use of Joni Mitchell since Love Actually .

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Review: Brilliant 'CODA' is a moving, must-see movie that will inspire you to sign up for Apple TV+

The fantastic, funny and heartfelt dramedy “CODA” doesn’t astound by breaking the mold of teen romances and coming-of-age tales. Instead, its brilliance lies in combining these well-tread tropes with an important sense of inclusion for a sweet story that truly sings. 

Written and directed by Siân Heder – and based on a 2014 French film – “CODA” (★★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters and on Apple TV+ ) features a breakthrough role for talented newcomer Emilia Jones and a thoughtful narrative that takes audiences into the personal lives of a deaf family with a single hearing member. By the end, you’ll have Joni Mitchell stuck in your head, a renewed respect for Oscar-winning great Marlee Matlin , perhaps a want to learn American Sign Language and probably a couple of tear-drenched hankies.

So if  "Ted Lasso" hasn't already inspired you to sign up for Apple TV+, this should do the trick.

'We are not costumes': Why Marlee Matlin put her foot down about 'CODA' casting deaf actors

Ruby (Jones) is a 17-year-old Massachusetts girl – the Child of Deaf Adults, or "CODA" in the title – who works on the family fishing boat with her worrying mom Jackie (Matlin), salty dad Frank (Troy Kotsur) and headstrong brother Leo (Daniel Durant). Seafood buyers in the coastal town of Gloucester try to take advantage of the working-class clan, with Ruby usually stepping in as the resident translator. She juggles that life with her high school days, where she’s mocked by classmates for her hardscrabble roots (“Do you smell fish?” one mean girl quips passing by Ruby in the hall).

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When it’s time to sign up for clubs, Ruby sees her crush Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) join choir and follows suit. Ruby is actually a really good singer, though her first meeting with eccentric choir director Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez) brings out old insecurities.

What to watch this weekend: 'Free Guy,' 'Respect' and 'CODA'

Mr. V takes an interest in Ruby, though, pairing her with Miles for a duet and offering to help her get ready for an audition at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. But her parents, a randy twosome who live to embarrass Ruby, don’t understand this new direction for her interests and insist she’s needed to help their struggling business. “If I was blind, would you want to paint?” Jackie signs to her daughter.

Like last year’s excellent “ Sound of Metal ,” Heder gives hearing viewers the perspective of a deaf person: When Ruby performs at a school concert, you experience the same silence as her dad, and instead of listening to the impact of his daughter’s powerful voice, you witness it in the facial reactions of those sitting by him. Similarly, during an emotional conversation between Ruby and her mom that's a long time coming, Heder again strips away the sound so audiences can give undivided attention to their hands signing and the important connection between mother and daughter.

Matlin charms as a mom doing what she can for the family while also navigating her own issues interacting with the hearing world, and Kotsur’s sure to find some new fans as the dad having his world opened up by experiencing – in his own way – Ruby’s musical gift. Jones is the most impressive standout, showing the blossoming from an awkward teen girl to one owning a freedom of confidence. Her chemistry with Walsh-Peelo is decent enough, though Jones and Derbez – a notoriously lively Mexican comedic star who lends a nuanced and restrained performance here – are a more dynamic duo.

The crowd-pleasing “CODA” uses a touching lead performance, common themes and a glimpse at a spirited deaf family to craft a beautiful exercise in empathy chock full of the warm fuzzies.

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'CODA' Will Yank Shamelessly On Your Heartstrings ... But It's Very Good At It

Linda Holmes

Emilia Jones and Marlee Matlin play daughter and mother in the new film CODA . Apple TV+ hide caption

Emilia Jones and Marlee Matlin play daughter and mother in the new film CODA .

Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) is in her last year of high school. She doesn't have much of a plan beyond graduation, because she assumes she's going to continue as she has been, working with her father and brother on the family fishing boat out of Gloucester, Mass. Ruby loves music and loves to sing, but the idea of actually trying to study or explore music seems like an impossible idea, even after her choir teacher (Eugenio Derbez) sees promise in her and encourages her to apply to Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Deciding whether to work in the family business or strike out on your own is always tough, but for Ruby, it has an added wrinkle: her parents (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur) and her brother (Daniel Durant) are deaf. Ruby herself is not; she is what's called a CODA: a Child of Deaf Adults.

Directed and written by Sian Heder, CODA is closely based on a 2014 French film called La Famille Bélier , but this version has one important quality that the French film didn't : The deaf characters are played by deaf actors. Matlin is probably the most famous deaf actor in the United States, but CODA also has hugely appealing turns from Kotsur and Durant, both of whom have worked with the Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles , including on its lauded production of Spring Awakening. Matlin has worked there, too.

How Troy Kotsur Broke Barriers As A Deaf Actor, On Stage, On Screen And Now In 'CODA'

The fundamental conflict for Ruby is the disruption it would cause in her family for her to leave. She's been her parents' interpreter since she was a child, and she feels responsible for things like making sure her father isn't cheated when he sells his fish at the end of every day.

Her parents — especially her mother — wonder what they would do without her to act as a bridge to the local community, which seems to have made no effort at all, either socially or in business terms, to communicate with the Rossis. This weighs on her parents, and it weighs on Ruby. It cannot go on like this forever, but what, her mother wonders, is the alternative?

CODA is a cheerfully conventional story in many respects: a kid discovers what she loves and has to figure out what she's willing to give up to follow her dream. She has an inspirational teacher who believes in her. She's met a boy, and that relationship is also making her think about life beyond the family she defends fiercely and sometimes resents. It's a predictable piece in structure that's sharp in execution, and that's so inventive and fresh in some of its particulars that it almost disguises the most conventional story beats.

Widely released films rarely embrace ASL as much as CODA does, even for deaf characters: here, rather than speech being prioritized for hearing audiences, the actors sign and are subtitled, and the language is allowed to breathe in a way that's moving, often funny, and very effective. ( According to Variety , the French film didn't subtitle the signing; hearing audiences only understood it through the daughter repeating or responding to it.)

Troy Kotsur and Marlee Matlin are outstanding as Ruby's parents in CODA . Apple TV+ hide caption

Troy Kotsur and Marlee Matlin are outstanding as Ruby's parents in CODA .

There is no question that Ruby's awakening about music can be vigorously corny — but the thing is ... so are a lot of real high school awakenings about art. I myself went to a summer music camp as a teenager where lots of people were very serious musicians headed for conservatories. We learned the song "I Sing The Body Electric" from Fame — from actual, literal Fame , for heaven's sake! — and believe me, at 15 I was deeply moved by singing lines like "I'll look back on Venus, look back on Mars/and I'll burn with the fire of ten million stars." It was extremely corny and it meant the world to me. What's more, our choral director believed everyone should know how to learn parts by ear, so she taught us that one without sheet music, just standing around together, which made it feel even more like a thing that would ... you know, happen in a movie.

So while Ruby's path is audience-ready and feels engineered to cause tears, sometimes music and theater kids are exactly that swept up in what they're doing. It might be cheesy, but if you're going to go for this kind of grand emotion, this actually might be the right setting for it.

And in the meantime, you get a much more subtle story alongside that about the ways in which this family dynamic both hurts and serves everyone in it. Ruby feels like she's sacrificed a great deal for her family; her brother senses that she gets something from being the only person she thinks can communicate with the rest of the world effectively. This gentle study of patterns in families, where everybody can love each other while still being stuck in habits they need to break, doesn't have the bombast of the musical sequences, but it has its own resonance.

Did CODA deserve to crowd out everything else to the degree that it did when Sundance handed out its awards? Probably not. But there is a place for the crowd-pleaser, the tear-jerker, the movie that wants to manipulate your emotions and make you cry — particularly if it manages to bring something new to an old formula. The performances here, especially from Kotsur and Durant, neither of whom were actors I had seen much of, are excellent. And if it feels silly to cry while people sing, then, well, as we all learn in time, there are worse reasons for tears.

Apple’s “CODA” wins historic Oscar for Best Picture at the Academy Awards

• Best Picture: “CODA”
• Best Supporting Actor: Troy Kotsur in “CODA”
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Siân Heder for “CODA”

Text of this article

March 27, 2022

PRESS RELEASE

“CODA” becomes the first film with a predominantly Deaf cast to win Best Picture, star Troy Kotsur is the first Deaf male actor to win an Oscar, Siân Heder wins Best Adapted Screenplay, and Apple becomes the first streaming service honored with Best Picture at the Academy Awards

cupertino, california  Apple tonight made history after “CODA” landed three Academy Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with wins for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Siân Heder. The winners were revealed this evening at the 94th Annual Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles.

“CODA” is the first motion picture starring a predominantly Deaf cast in leading roles to win Best Picture; Troy Kotsur is the first Deaf male actor to win Best Supporting Actor; and writer-director Siân Heder earned her first-ever Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

“On behalf of everyone at Apple, we are so grateful to the Academy for the honors bestowed on ‘CODA’ this evening,” said Zack Van Amburg, Apple’s head of Worldwide Video. “We join our teams all over the world in celebrating Siân, Troy, the producers, and the entire cast and crew for bringing such a powerful representation of the Deaf community to audiences, and breaking so many barriers in the process. It has been so rewarding to share this life-affirming, vibrant story, which reminds us of the power of film to bring the world together.”

“What an incredible journey it has been since the moment we first saw ‘CODA’ to today’s historic recognition from the Academy,” said Jamie Erlicht, Apple’s head of Worldwide Video. “It has been a true joy to witness the positive impact on humanity that this story and its performances have had worldwide. We send our warmest congratulations to Siân; Troy; the cast; the creative team; producers Patrick, Philippe, and Fabrice; and everyone who helped bring inclusion and accessibility to the forefront through this remarkable film.”

Apple received three total awards at the 94th Academy Awards:

In addition to today’s Academy Award honors, the globally beloved film has received numerous history-making accolades since its debut, becoming the first motion picture with a predominantly Deaf cast to receive a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. At this year’s PGA Awards, “CODA” became the first film with a predominantly Deaf cast to receive the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures, recognizing producers Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, and Patrick Wachsberger. Troy Kotsur is the first Deaf male actor to ever receive an Oscar, a BAFTA Award, a SAG Award, a Film Independent Spirit Award, and a Critics Choice Award for his moving performance in the Supporting Actor category. “CODA” writer-director Siân Heder was also recently recognized with this year’s WGA Award and BAFTA Film Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. 

At the Sundance Film Festival in 2021, where the Apple Original Film had its world premiere, “CODA” was honored with an unprecedented four awards, including the Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast, the Directing Award, the Audience Award, and the Grand Jury Prize, making it the first top Sundance winner to achieve an Oscar for Best Picture. “CODA” has also received an AFI Award, an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Independent Motion Picture, and four Hollywood Critics Association Film Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for Siân Heder, and Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur, as well as an HCA Spotlight Award. 

Since the debut of Apple TV+ just over two years ago, Apple’s series and films have earned 240 wins and 953 nominations, including recognition from the Academy Awards, SAG Awards, BAFTA Film Awards, Critics Choice Awards, Critics Choice Documentary Awards, NAACP Image Awards, Daytime and Primetime Emmy Awards, and more.

Seventeen-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the sole hearing member of a Deaf family — a CODA, or “child of Deaf adults.” Her life revolves around acting as an interpreter for her parents (Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur) and working on the family’s struggling fishing boat every day before school with her father and older brother (Daniel Durant). But when Ruby joins her high school’s choir club, she discovers a gift for singing and soon finds herself drawn to her duet partner, Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). Encouraged by her enthusiastic, tough-love choirmaster (Eugenio Derbez) to apply to a prestigious music school, Ruby finds herself torn between the obligations she feels to her family and the pursuit of her own dreams.

“CODA” is written and directed by Siân Heder, produced by Vendôme Pictures and Pathé, with Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, Patrick Wachsberger, and Jérôme Seydoux serving as producers, and Ardavan Safaee and Sarah Borch-Jacobsen as executive producers.

“CODA” is now streaming on Apple TV+.

About Apple

Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Apple’s five software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iCloud. Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it.

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‘CODA’ Is Every Single Sundance Movie Rolled Into One

By David Fear

When someone says “it’s a Sundance movie,” you probably know what they mean: the sort of small, sometimes scrappy movies that helped turn Robert Redford’s film fest out in Utah into both a welcome alternative to big-studio tentpoles (now more than ever!) and a kingmaking institution. It’s a catch-all term, and you don’t to have attended the festival to have seen a Sundance movie. Should you have found yourself left smiling and slack-jawed, or simply moved, by Eighth Grade, or The Spectacular Now, or Minari, or Half Nelson, to name just four movies that premiered there and found a deservedly larger audience afterward, trust us: you know what a Sundance movie is.

There is also a less charitable version of the phrase still in circulation, however, which suggests a rather clichéd version of the programming that regularly dots the fest’s lineup. These films get accused of merely being artisanal takes on stock sitcoms and issue-driven dramas, pushing overly familiar stories flecked with a bit more quirk. They’re often just north of pandering, a little too eager for that easy laugh, a little too aggressive in playing arpeggios on your heartstrings. They regularly walk away with jury awards and trade-reported deals. Maybe you caught Garden State, or Little Miss Sunshine , or Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, or numerous films of a similar vein. “Oh man, that was such a Sundance movie !” It isn’t necessarily a compliment in this case.

CODA, Sian Heder’s story of a young woman torn between pursuing her dreams and being a lifeline for her deaf family and the outside world, isn’t just a “Sundance movie”: it’s arguably the Sundance movie, somehow embodying both meanings of the phrase at once. Yes, this dramedy reminds you that studios don’t make this kind of modest, character-based film anymore. But it also provides a textbook example of the comfy-chair indie cinema that’s been an arthouse staple since the early Nineties. Having premiered at the virtual version of the fest this past January — a shame, as it would have killed with the opening-night Eccles Theater crowd — it went on to win the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience award, as well as getting picked up by Apple for a record-setting $25 million. (It begins streaming on their site starting August 13th.) They are getting a lot of bang for the buck, given that it’s a mash-up of several archetypal, go-to narratives shoved into the sausage skin of a single feature. You’re essentially watching five movies for the price of one.

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Based loosely on the 2014 French film La Famille Bélier, CODA — short for Child of Deaf Adults — focuses on a young woman named Ruby Rossi (take a bow, Emilia Jones). Tellingly, you hear the film’s heroine before you see her, with the sound of someone belting out a cover of Etta James’ “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” playing over a boat trawling the Atlantic. Ruby is part of a family who make their bones by hauling in fish, like so many other folks in their Gloucester, Massachusetts, home town. Dad (Troy Kotsur) is the skipper. Her older brother, Leo (Daniel Durant) works with him. Mom (Marlee Matlin) does the books. Ruby helps out, and is the only Rossi who isn’t deaf. She’s also a stealth singer with an amazing set of pipes, a gift that seems destined to go unused and unheralded.

Still, when that cute boy in the King Crimson t-shirt signs up for choir on the first day of school, so does Ruby. That’s how she finds herself standing in front of the school’s music teacher Mr. Villalobos, unable to produce more than a peep in front of her peers. He’s played by Eugenio Derbez, a triple-threat superstar in Mexico that ups the wattage of his supporting role by several notches. This is also a character whose introduction features him striding into a room and declaring, “They made my latte with some kind of nut milk today, so I’m in a mood !”, which, well … let’s just say there’s some broad-stroke sketching being done here. When Mr. Villalobos is finally able to coax the songbird to show him what she’s got, he recognizes a major talent. Her new mentor wants the young woman to develop her voice and audition for the Berklee College of Music at the end of the year. Ruby feels like she can’t leave her family behind. The psychic tug of war begins.

What we have here is a basic triumph-of-the-underdog tale, mixed with a regional David-vs. Goliath drama and an example of representation that you don’t usually get onscreen. The Rossis are fighting against Big Fishing, who want to issue quotas and set up strict economic parameters but won’t give the little guy a fair price. They’re also the type of salt-of-the-earth clan we’ve grown used to seeing on TV and in movies: Dad’s crusty, flatulent and horny; Mom is trying to make sure they can make ends meet; Leo is getting into bar fights and getting it on with ladies in the back room; there’s a rivalry between siblings but everyone sticks together, because blood is thicker than a New England accent. None of them get why Ruby wants to sing. The fact that three of the four members happen to be deaf is both no big deal — they’re a family, loving and embarrassing and argumentative, just like yours — and a distinguishing factor. You’ve seen these interactions before. You just don’t usually see them angrily signed in ASL.

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It’s in these family scenes where CODA comes alive the most, because the roles haven’t just been cast with deaf actors — they’ve been extremely well-cast, period. A TV veteran, Kotsur gives this blue-collar patriarch an impish quality that keeps Ruby’s dad from being a stock finger-wagger or a callous-handed saint; it’s the type of performance that tend to get older actors who already have long IMDb pages labeled “discoveries.” Durant adds some shade to the chip-on-the-shoulder heir apparent, itching to prove that he can handle the business. No one needs to sell anyone on Marlee Matlin’s talents — we can only say we’ve missed seeing her onscreen, and that this part is a great example of how she can make a meal out of just about anything. Jones has a lot of heavy lifting to do, from playing the odd person out to showing someone caught between two worlds to convincing you she’s second coming of Dusty Springfield. She handles it all deftly, even when the film starts throwing one plot pivot-point after another at her. Which, it’s fair to say, happens a lot.

And that’s what ultimately starts to sink CODA, despite everything it has going for it. The knock here isn’t that it’s a blatantly feel-good movie, shameless in its attempts to slap a grin on your face or work those tear ducts. It’s that it’s like watching several of those kinds of movies jockeying for space, and the pile-up turning into something that’s too much yet not enough. There are grace notes abound, including a formal conceit that Heder pulls during Ruby’s school-concert duet which is too good to outright spoil. But by the time you get to the sixth or seventh ending, the whole thing leaves you less uplifted than exhausted. CODA knows how to work that conventional-to-a-fault indie feeling like a champ. You may exit smiling. Just don’t be surprised if you also experience the sensation of having just been Sundanced to death.

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How ‘CODA’ went from indie underdog to best picture Oscar

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From the moment it premiered (virtually) at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, “CODA” seemed destined for something special. The story of a high school senior (Emilia Jones) who is the only hearing member of her household, the movie deftly balances comedy, drama and a little romance to chart the ups and downs of everyday family life. And does so with the unique perspective of three significant deaf characters played by Deaf actors (Oscar winner Marlee Matlin, Daniel Durant and breakout actor Troy Kotsur).

It would go on to win an unprecedented four awards at the indie festival and was acquired by Apple TV+ for a record-breaking $25 million to launch on the streamer with a concurrent theatrical release. (And this is when movie theaters were still barely open due to the pandemic.)

Although its release in August 2021 was relatively quiet, the critically acclaimed movie stuck around through a competitive awards season and slowly but surely proved its ability to stand out from the pack. In January it landed Oscar nominations for adapted screenplay, supporting actor (for Kotsur) and best picture.

By the time it won the top prizes at both the Screen Actors Guild and Producers Guild Awards, it became the unexpected front-runner for the best picture Oscar.

“CODA” would go on to win exactly that prize, plus awards for adapted screenplay and supporting actor, at the 94th Academy Awards. Its journey — as tracked by The Times beginning at Sundance — sure has been sweet.

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“CODA” Is a Feel-Bad Feel-Good Movie

By Richard Brody

It’s meant, all too conspicuously, as a feel-good movie. But “CODA,” an Oscar nominee for Best Picture that’s playing for free in select theatres this weekend (and is already streaming on Apple TV+), had the opposite effect on me. The movie, written and directed by Sian Heder, is based on the 2014 French film “The Bélier Family”; it’s the story of the Rossis, a third-generation fishing family in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It focusses on one of the Rossi children, Ruby (Emilia Jones), a seventeen-year-old high-school senior whose parents, Jackie (Marlee Matlin) and Frank (Troy Kotsur), are deaf, as is her older brother, Leo (Daniel Durant). Ruby is a hearing person but fluent in American Sign Language, and her life revolves around the family business. She goes out on the boat each morning with Leo and their father, and, back on shore, negotiates the sale of their catch to a wholesaler who, they’re convinced, takes advantage of them as deaf people (and of Ruby as a child). The drama involves Ruby’s efforts to develop a life of her own, to break away from her family without breaking with it—even as she recognizes that her independent activities and her extended absence may threaten her family’s livelihood. It’s no spoiler, alas, to know that all comes out well in the end for all concerned. The narrative cards all come up aces, as is predictable from the moment that they’re dealt.

It’s an achievement of sorts—a display of craft that’s also a kind of craftiness—to establish a level of predictability that both guarantees a payoff and maintains a low simmer of suspense. The drama depends on sustaining a viewer’s rooting interest while keeping it unthreatened with the actual possibility of loss. It isn’t only the movie’s bright and perky tone that thrusts its characters risk-free into a risky world but also the contours of the drama itself, the kinds of events that are shown and the kinds that aren’t, the character traits that are defined (with the cinematic equivalent of Day-Glo highlighters) and the ones that are neglected. When Ruby is first seen on the boat, she’s singing along with a record of Etta James, and guess what: Ruby’s way out involves singing. In the hall of her high school, beside her locker, she stares at a boy she thinks is cute; in the next scene, students are signing up for extracurriculars, and that boy, Miles Patterson (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), chooses choir, so Ruby impulsively signs up for it, too. The music teacher, Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez), a.k.a. Mr. V., quickly discerns Ruby’s unformed talent and picks her for the group’s featured duet—with Miles. The teacher also encourages her to apply to his alma mater, the Berklee College of Music, in Boston—but the private study that he’s offering to prepare her for her audition conflicts with her family duties at the dock. Yet, guess what: Leo, too, is impatient to exert some control over the family business without depending on Ruby’s assistance.

The convenient lineup of plot details extends beyond the foregrounded action into its psychological loam and its real-world implications. Can’t afford college? There are scholarships. Ruby is bullied? Suck it up, use it, and move on. The wholesaler is taking advantage of the Rossis? They start their own co-op. The other fishermen either ignore or mock Frank and Leo for their deafness? See what happens when the Rossis make them some money. “CODA” is a tale of the boundless bounty of personal initiative. The movie’s main villains are “the Feds,” federal maritime inspectors who intrusively impose on the entire fleet of fishing boats and bring charges against the Rossis for not having a hearing person aboard ship. It’s a cinematic, libertarian fairy tale, a genre that’s hardly unprecedented: Clint Eastwood doesn’t stint on his caricature of bureaucratic order, and will even do so in defiance of the history that he films, as in “ Sully .” But “CODA” doesn’t hint at the tragic sense of responsibility with which Eastwood matches his world view, or the symbolic imagination with which he evokes it.

The tale of work rewarded is also one of virtue rewarded, and its protagonists are defined by nothing but their virtues, of overtly calculated and oddly old-fashioned sorts. Frank and Jackie have an openly randy marriage (their loud afternoon sex turns into an absurd plot point), and the family gleefully talks dirty in A.S.L.; whereas Ruby, disdaining the sexual freedom of her best friend, Gertie (Amy Forsyth), all but proclaims her chastity. The discussions never go beyond the immediate practicalities of the family’s business (and, as for those practicalities, there’s precious little of them). Ruby’s amiable blankness is a template for grownup viewers to fill in with their own projections of what constitutes a good kid. Besides their tight family bonds and their narrowly defined social ones, the Rossis remain undefined. There’s no politics, religion, or culture, and the action takes place in isolation from ideas, points of view, reflections on life; its progress comes through the realization of sentiment, and its resolution of conflict comes mainly through the elision of any potential grounds for conflict.

On the other hand, the movie itself displays an authentic and significant merit, which is to offer large and dramatically vigorous roles to three deaf actors of extraordinary talent, and their performances give the movie a semblance of vitality and of presence that leaps beyond the confines of the script. What their performances reveal is the poverty of the commercial cinema at large (and, truth be told, of independent filmmaking, too) in the casting of deaf actors, of actors with disabilities. Yet, in “CODA,” the burden of labor falls entirely on these actors to suggest that their characters are anything but stick figures of goodness and honor and have a three-dimensional inner life. (Kotsur’s nomination for Best Supporting Actor is well deserved, for both the quality of his performance and the quantity of character-building that it demands.) Heder directs with a plain efficiency that lays the scripted events end-to-end and leaves out any feeling that the characters may exist between those scenes. The sense of cards, discrete and numbered, being turned over gets in the way of a viewer’s free perception and unencumbered thought. The movie is a litmus test of the willingness to be pulled along, from start to finish, staring straight ahead while being told that there’s nothing to see. The sense of calculation makes the journey feel like a lockstep march; the movie’s sense of a story that’s dictated rather than observed makes its good feelings feel bad.

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Inside the ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Series Finale: The Last-Minute Coda, the Surprise Easter Eggs, and What Season 6 Would Have Been About (EXCLUSIVE)

SPOILER WARNING: This story includes descriptions of major plot developments on the series finale of “ Star Trek : Discovery,” currently streaming on Paramount+ .

Watching the fifth and final season of “ Star Trek: Discovery ” has been an exercise in the uncanny. Paramount+ didn’t announce that the show was ending until after the Season 5 finale had wrapped filming — no one involved with the show knew it would be its concluding voyage when they were making it. And yet, the season has unfolded with a pervasive feeling of culmination. 

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“I think there’s more to it than just, ‘Oh, it was a coinkydink!’” the actor says with a laugh, before explaining that she’s thinking more about subtext than direct intent. “I’ve gotta give Michelle her flowers. She has always asked the deeper questions of this story and these characters. Those questions of meaning and purpose led to questions of origin and legacy, and, yes, that is quite culminating.”

Martin-Green and Paradise spoke exclusively with Variety about filming the finale and the coda, including the surprising revelation about the origins of one of “Discovery’s” most memorable characters and what Paradise’s plans for Season 6 would have been.

“It’s the Most Complicated Thing I’ve Ever Seen”

Once the “Discovery” writers’ room decided the season would be organized around a search for the Progenitor’s technology, they also knew that, eventually, Burnham would find it. So then they had to figure out what it would be.

“That was a discussion that evolved over the course of weeks and months,” Paradise says. Rather than focus on communicating the intricate details of how the technology works, they turned their attention to delivering a visual experience commensurate with the enormity and complexity of something that could seed life across the entire galaxy.

“We wanted a sense of a smaller exterior and an infinite interior to help with that sense of power greater than us,” Paradise says. Inspired in part by a drawing by MC Escher, the production created an environment surrounded by towering windows into a seemingly endless procession of alien planets, in which it’s just as easy to walk on the walls as on the floor. That made for a daunting challenge for the show’s producing director, Olatunde “Tunde” Osunsanmi: As Burnham battles with the season’s main antagonist, Mol (Eve Harlow), inside this volume, they fall through different windows into another world, and the laws of gravity keep shifting between their feet.

“It’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen, directorially,” Paradise says. “Tunde had a map, in terms of: What did the background look like? And when the cameras this way, what’s over there? It was it was incredibly complex to design and shoot.”

Two of those planets — one in perpetual darkness and rainstorms, another consumed by constant fire — were shot on different parking areas on the Pinewood Toronto studio lot.

“The fire planet was so bright that the fire department got called from someone who had seen the fire,” Paradise says. “It should not be possible to pull those kinds of things off in a television show, even on a bigger budget show, with the time limitations that you have. And yet, every episode of every season, we’re still coming in on time and on budget. The rain planet and the fire planet we shot, I believe, one day after the other.”

Martin-Green jumps in: “Michelle, I think that was actually the same day!”

“It Felt Lifted”

The last time a “Star Trek” captain talked to a being that could be (erroneously) considered God, it was William Shatner’s James T. Kirk in 1989’s “Star Trek: The Final Frontier.” The encounter did not go well.

“I had my own journey with the central storyline of Season 5, just as a believer,” Martin-Green says. “I felt a similar way that Burnham did. They’re in this sort of liminal mind space, and it almost felt that way to me. It felt lifted. It really did feel like she and I were the only two people in this moment.”

It’s in this conversation that Burnham learns that while the Progenitors did create all “humanoid” alien species in the galaxy in their image, they did not create the technology that allowed them to do so. They found it, fully formed, created by beings utterly unknown to them. The revelation was something that Martin-Green discussed with Paradise early on in the planning of Season 5, allowing “Discovery” to leave perhaps the most profound question one could ask — what, or who, came first in the cosmos? — unanswered.

“The progenitor is not be the be all end all of it,” Paradise says. “We’re not saying this is God with a capital ‘G.’”

“There’s Just This Air of Mystery About Him”

Starting on Season 3 of “Discovery,” renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg began moonlighting in a recurring role as Dr. Kovich, a shadowy Federation operative whose backstory has been heretofore undisclosed on the show.

“I love the way he plays Kovich,” Paradise says of Cronenberg. “There’s just this air of mystery about him. We’ve always wanted to know more.” When planning Season 5, one of the writers pitched revealing Kovich’s true identity in the (then-season) finale by harkening back to the “Star Trek” show that preceded “Discovery”: “Enterprise,” which ran on UPN from 2001 to 2005.

In the final episode, when Burnham debriefs her experiences with Kovich, she presses him to tell her who he really is. He reintroduces himself as Agent Daniels, a character first introduced on “Enterprise” as a young man (played by Matt Winston) and a Federation operative in the temporal cold war. 

This is, to be sure, a deep cut even for “Star Trek” fans. (Neither Cronenberg nor Martin-Green, for example, understood the reference.) But Paradise says they were laying the groundwork for the reveal from the beginning of the season. “If you watch Season 5 with that in mind, you can see the a little things that we’ve played with along the way,” she says, including Kovich/Daniels’ penchant for anachonistic throwbacks like real paper and neckties.

“I didn’t know that that was going be there,” Martin-Green says. “My whole childhood came back to me.”

“We Always Knew That We Wanted to Somehow Tie That Back Up”

Originally, Season 5 of “Discovery” ends with Burnham and Book talking on the beach outside the wedding of Saru (Doug Jones) and T’Rina (Tara Rosling) before transporting away to their next adventure. But Paradise understood that the episode needed something more conclusive once it became the series finale. The question was what.

There were some significant guardrails around what they could accomplish. The production team had only eight weeks from when Paramout+ and CBS Studios signed off on the epilogue to when they had to shoot it. Fortunately, the bridge set hadn’t been struck yet (though several standing sets already had been). And the budget allowed only for three days of production.

Then there was “Calypso.” 

To fill up the long stretches between the first three seasons of “Discovery,” CBS Studios and Paramount+ greenlit a series of 10 stand-alone episodes, dubbed “Short Treks,” that covered a wide variety of storylines and topics. The second “Short Trek” — titled “Calypso” and co-written by novelist Michael Chabon — first streamed between Season 1 and 2 in November 2018. It focuses on a single character named Craft (Aldis Hodge), who is rescued by the USS Discovery after the starship — and its now-sentient computer system, Zora (Annabelle Wallis) — has sat totally vacant for 1,000 years in the same fixed point in space. How the Discovery got there, and why it was empty for so long, were left to the viewer’s imagination. 

Still, for a show that had only just started its run, “Calypso” had already made a bold promise for “Discovery’s” endgame — one the producers had every intention of keeping.

“We always knew that we wanted to somehow tie that back up,” says Paradise, who joined the writers’ room in Season 2, and became showrunner starting with Season 3. “We never wanted ‘Calypso’ to be the dangling Chad.”

So much so, in fact, that, as the show began winding down production on Season 5, Paradise had started planning to make “Calypso” the central narrative engine for Season 6. 

“The story, nascent as it was, was eventually going to be tying that thread up and connecting ‘Discovery’ back with ‘Calypso,’” she says.

Once having a sixth season was no longer an option, Paradise knew that resolving the “Calypso” question was non-negotiable. “OK, well, we’re not going to have a season to do that,” she says. “So how do we do that elegantly in this very short period of time?”

“I Feel Like It Ends the Way It Needed to End”

Resolving “Calypso” provided the storytelling foundation for the epilogue, but everything else was about giving its characters one final goodbye.

“We want to know what’s happening to Burnham, first and foremost,” Paradise says. “And we knew we wanted to see the cast again.”

For the latter, Paradise and Jarrow devised a conceit that an older Burnham, seated in the captain’s chair on Discovery, imagines herself surrounded by her crew 30 years prior, so she (and the audience) could connect with them one final time. For the former, the makeup team designed prosthetics to age up Martin-Green and Ajala by 30 years — “I think they were tested as they were running on to the set,” Paradise says with a laugh — to illustrate Burnham and Book’s long and happy marriage together.

Most crucially, Paradise cut a few lines of Burnham’s dialogue with Book from the original Season 5 finale and moved it to a conversation she has with her son in the coda. The scene — which evokes the episode’s title, “Life Itself” — serves as both a culminating statement of purpose for “Discovery” and the overarching compassion and humanity of “Star Trek” as a whole.

To reassure her son about his first command of a starship, Burnham recalls when the ancient Progenitor asked what was most meaningful to her. “Do you know how you would answer that question now?” he asks.

“Yeah, just being here,” Burnham replies. “You know, sometimes life itself is meaning enough, how we choose to spend the time that we have, who we spend it with: You, Book, and the family I found in Starfleet, on Discovery.”

Martin-Green relished the opportunity to revisit the character she’s played for seven years when she’s reached the pinnacle of her life and career. “You just get to see this manifestation of legacy in this beautiful way,” she says. “I will also say that I look a lot like my mom, and that was that was also a gift, to be able to see her.”

Shooting the goodbye with the rest of her cast was emotional, unsurprisingly, but it led Martin-Green to an unexpected understanding. “It actually was so charged that it was probably easier that it was only those three days that we knew it was the end, and not the entirety of season,” she says.

Similarly, Paradise says she’s “not sure” what more she would’ve done had there been more time to shoot the coda. “I truly don’t feel like we missed out on something by not having one more day,” she says. “I feel like it ends the way it needed to end.”

Still, getting everything done in just three days was no small feat, either. “I mean, we worked ’round the clock,” Martin-Green says with a deep laugh. “We were delirious by the end — but man, what a way to end it.”

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