Butler's Cinema Scene

“AILEY” My rating: B (Available through mulitple streaming services)
82 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Ailey” opens with the 1988 Kennedy Center awards ceremony at which  choreographer Alvin Ailey was  honored for his contribution to American arts.  Actress Cicely Tyson praises Ailey — who would die only a year later — for developing what she calls “choreography of the heart.”  

That’s a terrific description of Ailey’s work.  And in fact the high points of Jamila Wignot’s documentary are the many performance snippets of Ailey’s brilliant creations, especially the life-changing “Revelations,” a distillation of his African American childhood and cultural influences capable of reducing the viewer to tears with a simple but absolutely perfect gesture.

Those moments of physical revelation are key to this doc because, truth be told, Alvin Ailey is knowable almost exclusively through his dance. The man himself kept his cards close to the vest.

The film employs creative editing of old footage to evoke Ailey’s childhood — born to a single mother in Depression-era Texas — and his subsequent adolescence in Los Angeles where he was exposed to the ballet and became a huge fan.  Later he became a dancer, working in New York before founding his American Dance Theatre and becoming a major force in the ballet world.

The Ailey legacy looms large.  As a child he could not conceived of a black professional dancer, and his creation of magnificent black-themed ballets was revolutionary.  At the same time, he insisted that his company be integrated.  Talent, in Ailey’s eyes, was color blind.

But the man himself?  Well, even people who worked with him for years — among them famed dancer Judith Jamison and fellow choreographer Bill T. Jones — had trouble getting a handle on his personality. 

“CODA” My rating: B (Apple+)

111 minutes | MPAA: PG-13

The cynic in me approached “CODA” with some trepidation. The trailer makes it look like an inspirational tale with a capital “I.”

Well, it is, but the marvel of Sian Heder’s first feature lies in the way it roots its story in a gritty reality…albeit a reality relatively few of us have been exposed to.

Ruby (Emilia Jones) is a high school senior living in a New England fishing village. On the surface, anyway, it’s picturesque as all get-out. Look closer and you see a town and a way of life in economic decline.

Ruby has grown up working her family’s fishing boat. We soon learn that she is essential to the clan’s financial stability. Ruby, you see, is a CODA (child of deaf adults).

Her mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin), father Frank (Troy Kotsur) and big brother Leo (Daniel Durant) rely on Ruby’s signing skills to run interference with the hearing world, whether it’s answering the marine radio or negotiating a sale price for their daily haul.

Heder’s screenplay (an adaptation of a 2014 French/Belgian production) centers on a conflict with existential implications. Ruby loves to sing. It’s about the only thing she’s good at.

And of course it is an avocation that cannot be shared by her hearing impaired family. In fact, they tend to be dismissive of Ruby’s artistic desires. Her mom pointedly asks if they were blind, would Ruby become a painter?

Things get dicier when the high school music teacher (Eugenio Derbez) sees potential in Ruby’s voice. He gives her a prominent role in an upcoming show; moreover, he begins pulling strings to have her considered for a scholarship by his old alma mater, the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

This opens up several wormy cans.

Can Ruby in good conscience abandon her family to pursue a personal dream? There’s Frank and Leo’s effort to create a fishermen’s co-op in a last-ditch effort to save the local fishing industry. There’s Mama Jackie’s stubborn view that deaf culture is vastly superior to the hearing world and that by pursing singing Ruby is betraying her roots.

And, yeah, there’s a guy…Ferdia Walsh-Peelo plays Ruby’s classroom singing partner and slowly percolating love interest.

The possibilities for saccharine uplift are legion — yet Heder and her cast sidestep all the pitfalls by giving us characters that are fully formed and absolutely believable. Ruby’s family is a brawling, beer-chugging, pot-sniffing bunch, incredibly funny even as they are infuriatingly exasperating.

And the casting of deaf performers in key roles is a huge plus. It now seems like a no brainer, but for most of Hollywood history hearing actors would have been used.

Jones, a Brit, effortlessly slides into Ruby’s sometimes chaffed skin; she’s a natural who never seems to be trying too hard. And she’s got a terrific singing voice (or seems to…nothing is ever quite what it seems in the movies).

| Robert W. Butler