A stunning, inventive adaptation sees through the eyes of the Nickel Boys

A groundbreaking adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel from 2019, RaMell Ross’ poetic and visionary Nickel Boys finds its resilient spirit and lyrical temperament in the details. The opening of the film—shot (like the rest of it) in a boxed 4:3 aspect ratio that amplifies its intimately searching feel—frames everything that a little boy’s eyes see in extreme close-ups, invoking a strong impression of lived-in memory, along with an unapologetic sense of presence. In those close-ups: a gold bangle adorns a wrist; an ashtray; a deck of cards dexterously shuffled. These scrapbook moments might be mundane, but their grit and grain leave a gentle nostalgic aftertaste like a modest home video.

When the camera widens ever so slightly later, our eyes land on one of the film’s most gorgeous images—it’s the 1960s in Tallahassee, Florida, at the height of Jim Crow, and a boy sees his reflection in a store window displaying various TV screens, airing something about Florida oranges, and then a technical college, before it switches to a Martin Luther King Jr. speech. The spectator is Elwood—here, played by Ethan Cole Sharp, and later through the majority of the film by Ethan Herisse (When They See Us)—and he’s taking it all in. Perhaps he’s imagining his future self, who lives in an idealistic version of a world brightened by MLK Jr.’s teachings, even if the world that he shares with his loving and wise grandmother Hattie (a truly stunning performance by Origin’s Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) doesn’t seem to have the same in mind for him.

You don’t have to have heard Ross’ enlightening remarks at Nickel Boys’ post-screening Q&A at the Telluride Film Festival to know that the brilliant filmmaker is constructing a Black archive on his own terms—an archive that has, for so long, either been mostly documented and constructed by patronizing white eyes, or systemically erased. To know Ross’ archival intentions as an artist, you just need to immerse yourself in his haunting, Oscar-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, through which he offered a masterful portrait of the Black residents of Alabama’s Hale County. In a way, Nickel Boys is an extension and expansion of that effort to create a truthful archive where Black people tell their own story, in the past and present, and into the future. It’s a rewarding effort at that, a defiantly unconventional art film that challenges our notions of what cinema is and should be. In that regard, Nickel Boys is evidently touched by the sense of exploration of a non-fiction creator, blending and braiding Ross’ narrative and documentarian senses fearlessly throughout, giving us one of the most immersive cinematic experiences of late—much like Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt did just last year.

While there will be inevitable comparisons between Barry Jenkins and Ross in the way that they both honor Black boyhood, Jackson is a closer comparison point for Ross for their shared experimental sensibility. They also have cinematographer Jomo Fray in common, to whom both films owe their sensory, hypnotizing feel. As one of the most exciting DPs working today, Fray honors the first-person and subjective perspectives of Nickel Boys’ main characters—Elwood, and Turner (Brandon Wilson), a hardened boy Elwood meets at the cruel and corrupt Nickel Boys Academy, where he is sent after being accused of a crime he didn’t commit. While the Academy is a place of brutality, abuse, and even murder (based on Florida’s very real and despicable Dozier School for Boys), Ross and Fray never indulge in sensationalist images of misery. But they do still capture and transmit the destabilizing fear, and the horrors of the school.

The incident that sends Elwood to the institution is filmed with an equally tense yet non-exploitative sensibility. Elwood’s only crime is getting into the wrong car on the way to his school, a pursuit encouraged by Elwood’s high school teacher who believes in his academic prospects. But whatever the future used to hold for him comes to a painful halt with that one innocent decision.

Again, Ross and Fray film nearly everything in first-person close-ups and long takes, allowing us to inhabit the body and spirit of the character who’s doing the seeing and perceiving. You might not always know instantly whose POV you’re sharing, but that’s very much the point of this constantly and tirelessly morphing film. It trusts the intelligence of the audience by planting enough clues around to reorient us again and again. This construction of perspective carries the viewer through the turns of the narrative, and is most effective during a scene when Hattie desperately tries to see Elwood at the academy. When she is yet again denied visitation, she begs for a hug from Turner instead, who knows just how rigged the system is against them, inside or outside.

The aforesaid disquieting scene is also one of the film’s most conventionally emotional, a gift you honestly crave more of throughout Nickel Boys. Ross’ formal dedication sometimes stands in the way of story and emotion, prioritizing visuals over earned moments of expressive, swelling feelings. And so this critic did wonder if Nickel Boys should have dialed up its narrative ambitions from time to time, stepping just a bit away from its creative non-fiction temperaments. Ross is evidently playing with this blend in his first foray into the narrative world (as an artist should) and it will be exciting to see how this dazzling filmmaker will continue to recalibrate those instincts with his future projects.

The seeds of his inventive new filmmaking have been planted both in Hale County and Nickel Boys—filmmaking that cleverly breaks rules and manipulates the passage of time until we see the future Elwood (Daveed Diggs) with his back to the audience, going through archives on his computer screen about the graves discovered at the Dozier School. This final act is also when the film blends its archival material (present throughout and gathered by archival producer Allison Brandin) into its story in bigger doses, giving us a glimpse of history both specific and vast. The same can be said about Nickel Boys, a film that fiercely wears its heart and artistic intentions on its sleeve. And how rare that is, especially at a time when we collectively fear that cinema might one day become a thing of the past. With an artist like Ross contributing to it, it will always have a future.

Director: RaMell Ross
Writer: RaMell Ross
Starring: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs
Release Date: October 25, 2024