‘CODA’: A landmark crowd-pleaser for a year light on crowds

“CODA,” a tender and stirring comingof-age tale about the only hearing member in a deaf family, might be the crowdpleaser of the year, but it was only a few weeks ago that director Siân Heder saw it with an audience.

For months after its lauded premiere at a virtual Sundance Film Festival in January (where the movie fetched a Sundance record $25 million acquisition price and won the top prize ), Heder had heard from people who had watched “CODA” at home on a link about how the film moved them, how it made them cry, how important it is. But when she screened it in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the film is set, she could finally hear something else: How big the laughs it gets are.

“You don’t really know that those work unless you’re sitting in a room full of people,” says Heder.

“CODA,” which arrives Friday in theaters and on Apple TV+, is poised to be something that’s been hard to find in a year light on crowds: a bona fide, heartbursting, tell-everyone-about-it crowdpleaser.

Starring a trio of sensational actors who are deaf — Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur and Daniel Durant — “CODA” is also unlike most heart-on-its-sleeve movies before it. It’s a crowd-pleaser that expands just who’s in “the crowd,” enlarging a movie world that seldom depicts deaf lives dynamically or authentically. A landmark film in on-screen representation, “CODA” proves — with spirit and, yes, laughs — how much the movies have been missing.

“It takes more than one person to understand to make actors who are deaf cast in films. A lot of people just aren’t in the know. They don’t know that we can work just as easily as anyone else,” says Matlin with an interpreter. “I know — I don’t hope — that ‘CODA’ will change the landscape.”

“CODA” is hoping to be a part of that change not just in how it was made, but in how it’s being released. All screenings in the U.S. and U.K. will be presented in open captions. On Apple TV+, subtitles and subtitles for the deaf will available in more than 36 languages.

Richard Shotwell / Associated Press Actress Marlee Matlin, from left, director Sian Heder and actress Emilia Jones promote the film “CODA.”