Gemma Creagh looks at RaMell Ross’s powerful adaptation Nickel Boys.
Bold, brave, compelling, Nickel Boys is a piece of art that brilliantly utilises form to question the very nature of perspective.
This film is based on Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel The Nickel Boys, set in the southern states during the 1960s Jim Crow era. The narrative opens with the first-person perspective of a young African-American, Elwood Curtis (Ethan Cole Sharp / Ethan Herisse). Raised by his affectionate grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) and encouraged by his teacher Mr. Hill (Jimmie Fails), Elwood makes plans for a promising future. After securing a coveted spot on a tuition-free accelerated study programme, he sets out on a journey for education, but fate has other plans. En route, he is picked up by a man driving a stolen car. When the police stop them both, Elwood is tried as an underage accomplice and sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school based on the real-life Dozier School for Boys.
Nickel is internally segregated, with white children enjoying sports and preferential treatment, while black children receive little to no education, are subjected to violent punishment, and are used for free labour. It’s over the terrible food that Elwood meets Turner (Brandon Wilson) for the first time, and the perspective of the film shifts. We see Elwood now through Turner’s eyes, as the pair become friends. While Elwood remains hopeful that he can find justice in the world—and in that forsaken institution—Turner responds with hard-wired cynicism. He has seen systemic inequity first-hand and up close. As the months unfurl at Nickel Academy, the two young men become inseparable, a comfort to one another as the horrors and violence of the institution become their lived reality.
The performances across the entire cast are confronting and authentic, which is quite a technical feat given the nature of that filming process. This direct eye contact with the performers proves powerfully impactful—especially in the case of Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s Hattie, where generations of pain reflect back at us through the lens. This is her lens for the short time she spends on screen. She is nothing short of beautiful. Also, the choice to spend time with Elwood, as Elwood in fact, for those earlier years, in those beats of quiet, sets the space for small moments of stillness amongst the loss and hopefulness of the Nickel Academy later on.
As an audience, we are so used to, even unconsciously, a standard language of cinema. But in Nickel Boys, each choice by director and co-writer RaMell Ross is conscientious of this and shakes us from this heightened, coded and artificial curation we as viewers are used to. This forces us to experience the narrative differently, well, quite literally from another perspective. This delivery via the POV format is interwoven with archival and abstract materials, and the non-linear narrative structure combines to be a visceral experience that is quite literally haunting. This is a challenging film across many senses. Although the conclusion feels inevitable, nothing is simply spelled out, and key moments prove difficult, even inaccessible. But such is life. As described in an interview by Ellis-Taylor for CineMagna, RaMell is “aligned with the moments of the earth” , meaning he’s a nimble director who trusts his creative intuition with actors, and isn’t afraid to follow where this leads him.
Let this review serve as a trigger warning for local audiences. The nature of this film’s subject matter—which focuses on the psychological fallout, violence, and human cost of systemic and state-supported institutional abuse—will hit very close to home for an Irish viewer. The experimental nature of the film won’t be to everyone’s taste, but for those comfortable with the form, missing this on the big screen would genuinely be a lost opportunity.
In cinemas 3rd January 2025.
