RaMell Ross’ *Nickel Boys* is truly remarkable. This uncommon Hollywood endeavor, akin to this year’s *I Saw the TV Glow*, expands the horizons of cinematic narrative with a visually transformative style. Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book *The Nickel Boys*, the film explores the grim tale of a violent reform school in 1960s Florida. With finely crafted details, it illustrates the lives of young Black adolescents ensnared in a repressive system, while also highlighting the real-life events that inspired the novel.
Presented predominantly from a first-person viewpoint, *Nickel Boys* confronts audiences who are used to more conventional filmmaking. Throughout its 140-minute duration, the film gradually instructs viewers on how to traverse its distinctive format, intertwining a deeply personal story of identity and resilience with significant political themes. Whitehead’s novel is recognized for its significant interplay between spoken word and silence, a balance that Ross adeptly converts to the cinematic realm. Rather than depending on absence, the film incorporates layered archival videos and images, merging fiction with realism, stirring feelings of nostalgia and sorrow.
Ross steers clear of the pitfall of exploiting visual trauma, instead concentrating on its profound, lasting repercussions. The film’s non-linear narrative reflects how trauma is lodged in memory and the body, occasionally jumping ahead decades to reveal how the past continues to cast a shadow on the present. Few debut narrative features resonate as powerfully or are as intricately crafted as *Nickel Boys*, which communicates its own cinematic dialect while expressing its drama with precision and instinct. The outcome is a poignant artwork of endurance and self-discovery.
### What is *Nickel Boys* about?
The film centers on 16-year-old Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), a talented youth from Tallahassee residing with his grandmother, Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), in the Jim Crow-era South. As he heads toward a technical college for advanced coursework, Elwood is wrongfully accused of theft and sent to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reform institution that conceals its brutality behind a guise of discipline and hard work.
A committed admirer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Elwood’s optimism is at odds with the harsh truths of Nickel, where segregation and corporal punishment prevail. He finds comfort and direction in Turner (Brandon Wilson), a peer from Houston whose realistic survival strategies contrast with Elwood’s ethical beliefs. The boys exist under the ever-present threat of the school’s sadistic superintendent, Spencer (Hamish Linklater), who enforces order through violent beatings—or worse. The film makes the novel’s implications of sexual violence more explicit, adding further horror to the narrative.
What distinguishes *Nickel Boys* is how candidly the students at the institution discuss its atrocities. The destinies of students who “vanish” are not whispered gossip but accepted realities, keeping everyone compliant as they toil in the fields or perform deliveries for little to no compensation. The visuals resonate with the legacy of American slavery, featuring white students overseeing their Black counterparts and rusty iron rings embedded in trees evoking harrowing images of bondage. These visual symbols link the historical systemic violence to the ongoing abuses of the present.
In contrast to many films that portray slavery or racial violence, *Nickel Boys* emphasizes the lasting effects of these systems rather than simply recounting their horrors. Ross navigates this delicate balance with skill, employing archival clips—like those from Sidney Poitier’s *The Defiant Ones*—to illustrate connections between the boys’ struggles and wider societal injustices.
“There are four ways out of Nickel,” Turner informs Elwood. Reaching 18, being released for good behavior, or having a family lawyer overturn your sentence are the sanctioned routes, though the latter is uncommon and challenging. The fourth option—escaping—is the most perilous, as it frequently ends in tragedy. For Turner, survival necessitates conforming to the system, while Elwood dreams of confronting it, even if doing so jeopardizes everything. Their differing strategies create significant stakes, even as much of the film unfolds in quiet exchanges of friendship and shared understanding.
### A powerful aesthetic approach
Ross applies a first-person view to draw viewers into Elwood’s life, a method reminiscent of films like *Enter the Void* but achieved with a more down-to-earth, emotional focus. From the very first scenes, the movie captures Elwood’s reflections—both physically and symbolically—as he catches sight of himself in bus windows or his grandmother’s steam iron. These instances crystallize his growing awareness of his identity in the world, mirroring James Baldwin’s reflections on the pivotal realization of Blackness.
Cinematographer Jomo Fray enhances this viewpoint with soft focus and telephoto lenses, removing naturalistic layers to generate rich, sensory imagery that resembles cherished memories. The sound of a cake knife striking a plate or the warmth of a homemade dessert conjures a palpable sense of love and care, standing in stark contrast to the cold brutality of Nickel.