Director: RaMell Ross
Cast: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, Jimmie Fails, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Rating: (M)
★★★★+
REVIEWED BY AMASIO JUTEL
Transcendent and singular, RaMell Ross dramatically pioneers a new cinematic language, revitalising the art of literary adaptation in his retelling of Colson Whitehead’s prize-winning 2019 novel, Nickel Boys (Prime Video). Like a collection of sensory ephemera — vivid, cinematic memories — Ross’ camera establishes an emotional perspective akin to home video footage, lending an authentic, "lived-in" feeling to his depiction of 1960s Florida.
Nickel Boys is the story of two African American boys at a reform school in the last years of the Jim Crow era. Recognised for his tenacity as a student and aspirations in civil rights activism, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is encouraged by his English teacher to enrol in a community college. Accidentally hitching a lift to that school in a stolen car separates Elwood from his grandmother Hattie (played incredibly by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), landing him in the Nickel Academy, an abusive, racist reform school, where disobedient Black boys are killed and then buried in unmarked graves. At Nickel, Elwood meets Turner (Brandon Wilson), and it is in the relationship between these two boys that the film’s thematic exploration flourishes.
The film begins from Elwood’s perspective, the camera inhabiting his consciousness in what Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray coin "sentient perspective," conveying how he sees and feels his environment. This perspective vividly mimics human consciousness. The camera’s sombre gaze unpacks the depths of these well-formulated characters, both in their actions, which are depicted on screen, and in their gazes, from which the camera shoots. Elwood’s grandmother slicing him cake or Elwood looking at Turner across a cafeteria. We understand and empathise with his concerns. The viewer’s only initial insight into Elwood’s appearance is told in reflections — printed phone-booth pictures with his girlfriend or glancing at the light bouncing off the window of a car.
The incredible storytelling revelation of the film occurs when the perspective switches to Turner for the first time, and we get to see the person (Elwood) that we have been thinking about — thinking through — the entire time. The film toggles between Elwood’s and Turner’s perspectives, bringing them together emotionally and structurally, making new meanings in ways not unlike a more traditional third-person perspective.
It is a truly unique formal strategy that Ross showed indications of in his 2018 Oscar-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Like Hale County, this observational view asks the audience to relate to its characters through their everyday thoughts and actions. Like a "slice of life", devoid of dramatic spectacle, it is a pseudo-documentarian style that lends authenticity to Ross’ thesis and heightens the feeling of horror at watching the events depicted.
Non-linear narrative structure is deployed superbly, developing even more perspective in this observational ambience (although shot slightly differently in the later timeline). This is evident in one memorable scene when an older Elwood runs into another survivor of Nickel in a bar, a sequence that asks the viewer to question how Ross has deployed perspective and memory throughout this vivid, near-consciousness experience.
A testament to its auteur pre-eminence, Nickel Boys has been nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards, which take place on Monday.
