The Heartwarming CODA Offers Boundary-Pushing Deaf Representation

The history of cinema is filled to the brim with polished actors attempting to feign disability in pursuit of acclaim and awards. It’s rare that we as an audience get to inhabit the life of a disabled character who is portrayed by an actor with that disability. CODA, the latest smart and brave effort from Tallulah director Sian Heder, features several deaf characters who are all played by  deaf actors. 

If that feels revolutionary, that’s because it is. While the story’s structure isn’t particularly unusual — a teen named Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) must balance her dream of going to college to study music with the responsibility of helping with the family fishing company — CODA has an authenticity that most films about people living with disabilities lack. Ruby’s family must reckon with some facts: Her mother (Oscar winner Marlee Matlin), father (Troy Kotsur) and brother (Daniel Durant) are all deaf, while Jones is what’s known in the deaf community as a CODA — a child of deaf adults. Rather than making an overwrought drama featuring A-listers playing deaf characters, Heder adapted the French film La Famille Bélier, and her movie has enough genuine warmth to heat a theater during the bitterest winter. CODA digs past the disability itself to tell a truly representative story. 

While 75 percent of the household is indeed deaf, they crack jokes, get frustrated with each other, have awkward conversations, grapple with familial speedbumps, get into fights, pursue dreams, overcome obstacles and share cheesy family memories — just like most families. It’s a necessary and long-time-coming breath of fresh air to see a film about disabled people that is a straightforward family dramedy and coming-of-age story. 

The film’s occasional broadness is easily forgivable considering how long and how often cinema has ghettoized stories of disability as pure tragedy. It’s not only important we get these types of films to expand the range of who we get to see on screen — it’s vital for the medium of film itself that representation takes more root. As prognosticators hand-wring over the fate of theaters and the state of filmmaking in the COVID era, a new type of movie is becoming more common: the mid-budget adult drama that legitimately focuses on equity. 

Apple is releasing CODA both in theaters — including the Belcourt — and via Apple TV+. Yes, it is important that such a major distributor picked up a film directed by a woman and featuring a mostly deaf main ensemble. But it’s also refreshing in that it bolsters a style of filmmaking that many have thought was going extinct. If you want the mid-budget adult drama to survive, don’t just support Martin Scorsese and David Fincher. Find movies like CODA — films that harness fresh perspectives and revitalize old templates that we all deep down know we can’t live without. 

Seeing the Rossi family deal with very relatable problems, nothing overtly cinematic — that’s the type of atypical studio presentation we’ve been lacking. Heder’s film does exactly what it needs to do. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel so much as seek out new, responsible ways to keep it rolling. Films like CODA represent a changing of the Hollywood guard — more folks at the table, putting people in the jobs they should’ve had all along.