Watching “CODA,” the tender, lively, funny, and beautifully stirring drama that opened the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, I had the most out-of-body movie-viewing experience I’ve had in the year since movie theaters closed down. I watched the film at home, on a link, late at night, by myself. But I’ve been going to Sundance since 1995, and “CODA,” which tells the story of a high-school girl in Gloucester, Mass., who’s the only hearing person in her family (her parents are deaf, and so is her older brother), is a drama with such a supremely open and connective spirit that watching it, I felt at times like I was literally peering through my screen and into the Eccles Theatre in Park City, sharing the experience with a quintessentially receptive Sundance audience — the kind of crowd, over the years, that I’ve come to cherish watching movies with there.

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