2nd August 2021
CODA is a sweet, heartfelt, funny film that might just make you want to join a choir, jump off the highest point and learn to love your crazy individuality.
It’s lovely to watch, fascinating and also full of so much heart. Starring the brilliant Emilia Jones as seventeen-year-old Ruby the sole hearing member of a deaf family – a CODA, child of deaf adults. Her life revolves around acting as 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. 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.
The story explores how at 17 you can have all the responsibilities in the world and not realise you are still just a kid who has not really lived and experienced life fully. Ruby is a teenager growing and needs her freedom to figure out her passions, ambitions and time to create her own relationships. We also see how her parents that have a disability have never really adapted into the world and totally rely on her to be the middle person, even though it’s unintentional pressure and they adore her it’s still not fair.
Ruby has enabled her family to not feel the need to integrate within society and truly live in the big world, instead choosing to always translate and be the ‘go to person’ in every scenario, they use her like a crutch. Once she spreads her own wings and discovers her love for music and talent for singing, something she can’t sadly share with them as they are deaf she has her moment of self discovery. Maybe she doesn’t just want to work on her father’s boat catching fish while she translates everything that is going on around them, but instead has her own dreams, she wants to sing and go to College, but she is torn by love and loyalty. The journey is not just hers but also theirs, change is uncomfortable and incredibly difficult but it also is empowering and a road to progress which they all need. Coda is an example of when representation is done well, yes disability is a big part of this story but it’s not the only thing. People are complex and having a disability adds to that, but doesn’t take away from all the other emotions we all deal with. money, stress, family growing apart and fear of change.
CODA has been written and directed by Siân Heder and is out in UK cinemas on August 13th and will stream on Apple TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ehtFGB6sI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUkDP1y5XBI&t=21s
