Nickel Boys is a film all about a familiar moment in America’s history, but RaMell Ross gives the viewers a different opportunity. It’s a movie all about seeing such events within another’s shoes, so as to give us a whole other perspective on something we might have read in history books so as to see things through the eyes of those who have been long ignored – especially as such injustices continue on into today. And such a method of telling this story might only be part of what allows Nickel Boys to land so powerfully from beginning to end, but it’s also what makes this film among the boldest and most confrontational American films in recent memory at that.
Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys is a story told from the perspectives of Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), two African-American boys in Jim Crow era Florida who are staying at Nickel Academy. Being based on the notorious Dozier School for Boys in Florida, in which many students have been abused, the Nickel Academy is a segregated institution in which White students live comfortably among one another, but Black students are left without any semblance of hope. But Elwood’s own ideals do not allow himself to be defeated so easily, meanwhile Turner has only been left embittered and cynical as a result.
Through a first-person perspective, RaMell Ross has made a wholly confrontational experience. There’s not a moment that ever feels sugarcoated, especially with everything that Elwood and Turner see as they constantly put up with bigotry from the adults who run Nickel Academy. But what makes this particular choice to tell everything in first-person so unique is how RaMell Ross forces the viewer into an uncomfortable spot of seeing what they cannot, because their eyes see what Elwood and Turner do. For some viewers, it may take getting used to, especially as Elwood and Turner may never appear on screen together, but it also allows us to see things within the moment all the better.
For Ross, it’s also important enough that small moments are emphasized so as to create a sense of poetry through another person’s eyes. Not only is this particular approach so radical, but it allows us to see the world differently for it’s not our story to tell even as we see it happen in front of us. But it also brings forth some truly stunning cinematography at that, so as to really capture a sense of beauty that affirms Elwood and Turner’s reasons to live. It’s a very radical approach, but knowing the nature of the material that RaMell Ross chose to adapt, it feels like a fitting way to allow audiences to reckon with shallow gestures of empathy so as to make those in positions of privilege see what Elwood and Turner would.
Nickel Boys is also a film about subjectivity, more than anything else – but that’s also an aftereffect of the paranoia brought on forth by the systemic oppression of African-Americans that has defined America’s ugly history. It’s a movie that captures those same fears, especially while many things remain unseen. But it’s also a moment where we really get to reckon with how we might know what’s coming forth, and people like Elwood and Turner would not within the moment. And as such, this key moment in America’s history can only be compartmentalized through increasingly fractured memories for those who knew the worst of it, owing to Ross’s own influence being taken from the Chris Marker short La Jetée.
In turn, this approach also encourages a complete shake up to how we’ve come to understand American history during the rise of the Civil Rights movement at that. Through most of the film, we’re also given a glimpse of where Elwood’s own view of the world around him finds its own meaning, especially from his own admiration of Martin Luther King, Jr. – just as many people would remember the impact has been made within the moment. Given how many quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. are often appropriated by liberal-minded viewers and simplified without consequence, Ross doesn’t only take this opportunity to remind audiences how revolutionary such ideals were: but they served to give hope to those who were often discriminated against through American history.
But that’s also part of where RaMell Ross has also achieved such a success in reshaping the memories of American history, through the choice of adapting Colson Whitehead’s novel. Nickel Boys on the surface will show itself to be a film all about teenagers putting up with the abusive treatment of school staff, but it’s also a movie all about how these memories compartmentalize from one generation of African-Americans to another. Ross found a way to communicate to his viewers that such cruelty doesn’t stop when one era was legally permitted to excise the absolute worst of it all. It’s a movie all about how these traumas stay with us from one generation to another, creating a more powerful statement all around in turn.
As we’re continually boxed to see the world as Elwood and Turner had remembered it, we’re only brought even closer to realizing how little we truly understood their plight. It helps that Brandon Wilson and Ethan Herisse are excellent in both roles, but Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s performance is one that should not be ignored either. For RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys isn’t just about telling a story from one point to the next, it’s about telling a story as seen from the ground up – so that he encourages his viewers to better reflect on their understanding of America during the Jim Crow era.
Watch the trailer right here.
All images via Amazon MGM Studios.
Directed by RaMell Ross
Screenplay by RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, from the novel by Colson Whitehead
Produced by Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, David Levine, Joslyn Barnes
Starring Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Premiere Date: August 30, 2024
Running Time: 140 minutes
Cinema from the Spectrum 
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