A Critical Perspective — Nickel Boys
RaMell Ross has had a very short film career to date, but it’s been one of distinction, due mostly to his camera work. A photographer by trade until he transitioned to cinema, he wowed critics with his 2018 documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, garnering an Oscar nomination. I did not care for that film, mostly because there was no real narrative, the two so-called protagonists were barely given any meaningful screen time (and by extension we got little insight into their lives and issues), and far too much time was spent on pretentious, artsy cinematography that admittedly looked good, but ultimately meant nothing. It was intended to show the hopelessness of rural black people in Alabama, but the feature itself felt meandering and pointless.
Now Ross has made the move to fiction with Nickel Boys, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, and thankfully, the parameters set by adaptation have resulted in a much more disciplined work. Spiritually it’s in the same vein as Hale County, as it uses a distinct visual profile via Ross’ lens to tell a story about the doomed existence of two young black men in the American south. However, unlike his previous documentary, this dramatization offers more intellectual and artistic honesty, because it’s based on real events, gives us a proper understanding of its leads, and doesn’t wander off on random tangents.
The central gimmick is the cinematography by Jomo Fray, which will likely earn a nomination from the Academy next week. For the bulk of the proceedings, the picture is shot in a first person perspective, usually that of Elwood (played primarily as a teen by newcomer Ethan Herisse, but also as a child by Ethan Cole Sharp and as a middle-aged adult by Daveed Diggs), a bright young man growing up in Tallahassee in the 1960s. Raised by his very protective grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), Elwood’s future looks very promising. He excels in school, earns the respect of his teachers, particularly the socially conscious Mr. Hill (Jimmie Fails) who encourages him to reject a revisionist and racially slanted curriculum, and even gets a college scholarship.
However, things quickly turn sour. While hitchhiking to his new campus, he’s picked up by a man driving a stolen car. When they’re pulled over, Elwood is arrested as an accomplice with no evidence, and in the Jim Crow 60s, he’s quickly convicted and sentenced to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reform school. The campus is strictly segregated, with white boys getting deluxe accommodations while the black students operate out of a makeshift shack and are tasked with performing manual labor in addition to their “studies,” which are just thinly-veiled sermons about how they were better off as slaves. The corrupt administrator, Spencer (Hamish Linklater), assures the young men that they can work their way up from their “worm” ranking to eventually become trusted leaders and “graduate” back into their normal lives, but it’s fairly clear that this is a prison in everything but name, and Spencer delights in his legal authority to dole out the harshness and put black people “in their place” through whatever sadistic means he desires.
The only sources of hope Elwood has come in two forms. The first is his grandmother, who’s been raising money back home to hire a lawyer for an appeal of his case. Surely a logical argument in front of an unbiased judge will see him released. The second is Turner (Brandon Wilson, who had a small role in The Way Back), another “student” who befriends Elwood and helps him survive. Turner admires Elwood’s idealism, but he also has to be the one to bring Elwood back to Earth and force him to face the reality of their situation. There are only three ways out of Nickel. You either age out, you run away, or you die.
Based on the Dozier School for Boys, a notorious Florida reform academy that was shuttered in 2011 due to its horrendous record of abuse and violence, Nickel serves as a youth version of Shawshank in this film, with Elwood and Turner as our respective Andy and Red. However, unlike that 1994 classic, this thematic sibling from 30 years later does not offer the moments of humanity and catharsis that Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman got. Instead, every day feels like another gauntlet, where literal or figurative beatdowns come from all sides, and no one is safe. A bully walks tall among Elwood’s classmates, but when he’s told to take a dive in a boxing match and doesn’t, the terror in his eyes is palpable. A school employee named Harper (Fred Hechinger), who initially seems friendly, has no qualms about exploiting Elwood and Turner as prison labor, threatens them whenever they get too familiar with him, and tries to say with a straight face that the boys should be lucky they’re locked up in Nickel rather than being drafted to fight in Vietnam.
The POV filming makes a lot of these scenes feel much more real than if they were shot traditionally. It’s creepily immersive at times. It’s also something of a double-edged sword, because there are several scenes that seem to exist just to show off what they’re doing, like an early shot of young Elwood looking at himself in his grandmother’s iron. Cool, you either got an angle where the convex reflection kept the camera out of the shot, or you CG-ed it out. Also, once we meet Turner, we get first person shots from both of them, which just means we’re filming it as normal, only cutting back and forth rather than putting the leads in a two-shot. I think most of these bits are meant to symbolize the fleeting moments of normalcy that Elwood feels, but it occasionally comes off as cheating with your own conceit.
The exception to this is a series of flash-forward scenes with adult Elwood. Now in the 21st Century, Elwood (Diggs) is leading a somewhat normal life in New York, but he has a particular obsession with the ongoing investigations into Nickel and other similar schools, where several unmarked graves have been exhumed, along with possessions of boys who went missing and were never found. Elwood has made it his mission to see these schools permanently closed and for those responsible for the atrocities to be held accountable so the victims can get justice and move on. These scenes are shot from a third person perspective behind Elwood’s head. We never see his face, and the camera remains largely static, like we (or someone else offscreen) is watching over him. If you’ve not seen the film or read the book I won’t spoil what this means, but it is predictable, and if you care to suss it out, I’ve already given you enough clues.
Apart from the main technical quirk, there’s a lot to be said about the performances. Ellis-Taylor is a great as ever, and I wouldn’t be the least bit upset if she got another nod from the Academy for her work here. The grandmother (I think the character’s given name of Hattie is only mentioned once in text) is much more than a doting guardian. Living in the south during the Civil Rights Era, she knows better than most the consequences of being too vocal and sticking out too much in a dangerous environment (the fate of Elwood’s parents being a constant burden for her), and she’s a regular reminder that the game is rigged. No matter how much good Elwood does, no matter how smart he is, she knows all too well that even one perceived slip-up is enough to effectively end his life, and she does all she can to protect him, fully aware that it will never be enough.
As for Herisse and Wilson, they have instant chemistry with one another, which is hard to get across when the vast majority of shots necessitates that we only see one of their faces at a time. These young men learned to convey so much just with tone and inflection that we in the audience can easily grasp their bond through words alone. This is not to say that they don’t act well physically, they certainly do, but it’s more of a bonus than a base requirement. I sincerely hope that this film makes stars out of them both, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.
This is a film that’s sad and poignant in all the right ways, and there are very few surprises. RaMell Ross definitely seized an opportunity here to tell a fairly straightforward yet powerful story in an innovative way, and the methodology works up to a point. It’s not always consistent, but like I said, Nickel Boys sees Ross honing his skills in a much more careful and concentrated manner, allowing us to appreciate his abilities while still being entertained and moved emotionally. This isn’t the best film of 2024, but it is one of the more unique, and in a year that was begging for standouts, you can certainly chalk this up as one of the highlights.
Grade: B+
Join the conversation in the comments below! What film should I review next? What other filmmaking gimmicks would you like to see a director try? If you saw the movie, how long did it take you to guess the ending? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!
Originally published at http://actuallypaid.com on January 18, 2025.