4 out of 5 stars

For his narrative debut, Academy Award-nominated director RaMell Ross adapts Colson Whitehead’s powerful 2019 novel using an innovative first-person point of view and a sensitivity usually reserved for coming-of-age dramas. Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book was inspired by Dozier School, a Florida reform school where authorities discovered a hundred unmarked graves and unearthed unimaginable stories of violence, sexual abuse, and racism.

Nickel Boys follows the smart and ambitious Elwood (Ethan Herisse), who’s trying to rise above the hardships he faces as a Black man. It’s the early-1960s and Elwood’s managed to find hope in the world despite growing up in the Jim Crow South.

When Elwood is accepted into college, he’s on the cusp of making something good of his life and helping his family rise from poverty, but a cataclysmic twist of fate leads to his conviction for a crime he didn’t commit. He’s duly sent to Nickel Academy, where he befriends the cynical Turner (Brandon Wilson)…

The cold-blooded schoolmaster (an underused Hamish Linklater) describes how the young Black men can earn their freedom, but Turner knows the system’s rigged. The two boys are stark opposites; one is already beaten down by life and resigned to his future, while the other still believes in an American Dream that’s accessible to everyone. Their friendship slowly develops, strengthened by their off-campus work with Harper (Fred Hechinger), where they have time to talk about their past and debate their different philosophies on life.

Nickel Boys stands out for the unique camera techniques that get inside the heads of the two lead characters. The first-person camera technique puts audiences into the auction. It takes a while to acclimatise to this style but, once enmeshed in this world, Ross’s directorial choice makes the movie more powerful. The film switches between Elwood’s and Turner’s perspectives with little warning, occasionally multiple times within the same scene. It forces the audience to quickly try to understand which character they’re with, distracting from the events unfolding on-screen. It’s a credit to Ross’s directing that the choice to put the audience behind the eyes of their characters mostly elevates the work, rather than becoming a gimmick.

Cinematographer Jomo Fray’s intimate point of view focuses on small details, making Nickel Boys a film about the two boys rather than tackling the heavy subject in the abstract. The camera lingers on pristine laws, racist graffiti in a textbook, and a delicate gold bracelet. Often, victims of such trauma become stereotypes and placeholders, but this camera technique allows Elwood and Turner to be young boys who make friends and laugh, even through the trauma.

In the later section of Nickel Boys, the story flashes forward to a more contemporary timeline. The weakest element of Nickel Boys is this timeline mainly follows a man hunched over his computer investigating the exhumed graves discovered near Nickel. Peppered throughout the third act, the man (Daveed Diggs) ponders whether he should come forward and give testimony about his time at the Nickel Academy.

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson are both excellent as Elwood and Turner, but Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is incredible as Elwood’s grandmother. Her role is frustratingly minor but hugely memorable. In one instance, she visits Nickel Academy to see her grandson but is denied. She encounters Turner and begs him for a hug, the camera panning in on her dress. It’s a shame there isn’t more for Ellis-Taylor to do, but what she does is powerful in its heartbreaking frustration.

Nickel Boys addresses well-trodden but important topics with a delicate hand. The violence between the schoolmaster and the students is mentioned but never shown. The Black boys and their real-life counterparts are given the dignity to be remembered, but their pain is never glorified. Elwood and Turner’s friendship is the focal point around which other events revolve. Not putting the abuse at the centre of the narrative and focusing on humanity makes the tragic tale even more powerful.

The film is a little too neatly delivered. While truthful to the source material and respectful of the real-life inspiration, the real moments feel few and far between. The characters speak too eloquently, performing monologues like a theatre play. The set feels too overstated, and the timeline flashback makes the past feel fictional. Even the twists are handled delicately and things are resolved too simply. Life has more grit and complexity than Nickel Boys wants to depict.

Between the fictional scenes, Ross uses archival footage to tell the story of American history. A documentary maker at heart, the footage doesn’t say anything that the writing hasn’t already addressed. With a 140-minute runtime, the writing could have been tighter, and the footage of real-life events and historical speeches doesn’t add life to an already emotive script. For example, the opening, which depicts Elwood’s childhood, could have been cut down and explored through the conversation between Elwood and Turner at the Nickel Academy.

RaMell Ross’s follow-up to the evocative documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018), is a sensitive depiction of a dark period in America. It focuses more on humanity, less on cruelty, and concentrates on the hope of two boys forming a friendship in the harshest of environments. The writing hits the perfect balance of never underplaying the horrors while not amplifying them, always leaving audiences with a hint of hope, even in the more devastating moments.

USA | 2024 | 140 MINUTES | COLOUR | ENGLISH

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Cast & Crew

director: RaMell Ross.
writers: RaMell Ross & Joslyn Barnes (based on the book by Colson Whitehead).
starring: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs & Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.