#DAMAGED CODA MOVIE#

Time passes differently during these moments-the lack of audible dialogue forces the viewer to be more present. Jones learned to sign for the role, and the scenes featuring her and her deaf co-stars are especially compelling. One afternoon she serves as her dad’s interpreter at a doctor’s appointment while he describes a pubic rash in great detail. We see her radioing to the coast guard and haggling with the guy who runs the fish market. Ruby rises before dawn each morning to work with her father, Frank, and brother, Leo (Daniel Durant), before heading off to school. Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the film’s namesake “CODA,” or child of deaf adults.

#DAMAGED CODA MOVIE#

Even after two viewings, I’m still trying to answer a fundamental question: Who is CODA for?Īs the movie opens on an establishing shot of the family boat, Etta James’s “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” plays on a small radio, but only one person onboard is seemingly aware of that. But the deaf performers play supporting roles, and we’re principally following the journey of a hearing protagonist. The production’s extensive use of ASL and its casting of deaf actors in deaf roles are milestones worth celebrating. During my second viewing, I tried to keep up with the spoken dialogue via the captions and found it fairly exhausting to do so.ĬODA pushes back against certain lazy Hollywood tropes by giving its deaf characters layered interior lives. When I streamed the movie again, I turned captions on for the duration, which is how the film plays in theaters, something Kotsur noted when he accepted his Screen Actors Guild Award last month. The first time I watched CODA, using the standard settings on my TV, captions appeared only when the actors were communicating through sign language. I’m a hearing person, but as someone who lives with a pronounced stutter, CODA deeply affected me in its portrayal of individuals navigating the minefield of sharing the thoughts inside their head with people who communicate differently than they do. Read: The little indie movie that deserves all the hype Matlin is the only deaf woman to have ever received a nomination she won for her role in 1986’s Children of a Lesser God. Kotsur steals scene after scene, and is now the first deaf man to be nominated for an Academy Award. Frank is a fisherman, a family man, and a Lebowski-esque stoner who cranks hip-hop in his truck so he can feel the bass rumble on his butt. Troy Kotsur, a deaf actor, delivers an exuberant, poignant performance as Frank Rossi, a deaf father. Roughly a third of CODA’s dialogue takes place in American Sign Language (ASL). By now readers may be familiar with CODA’s origin story: Filmed for a reported $10 million on location in Gloucester, Massachusetts, CODA won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, sold to Apple Studios for a record $25 million, and has since nabbed three Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Marlee Matlin, the deaf actress who played Laura, is part of the ensemble of deaf actors in the movie CODA. But the episode is illustrative of a larger phenomenon: For decades, whenever disabled characters have appeared on-screen, they’ve typically been defined by their disability and little else. It’s George’s gall, not Laura’s deafness, that’s the butt of the joke. He wants her to read lips from across the room at a party so he can find out what, if anything, others are saying about him. Naturally, George views Laura’s disability as something to be exploited. In a 1993 episode of Seinfeld, Jerry dates a deaf woman named Laura.

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Damaged coda