Grief is an almost impossible thing to come to terms with, let alone communicate effectively in a film. Sorrow, sadness, love, happiness, those are all possible, but grief is a stinging and harsh reality that can affect each person differently. The only way one could get close is to walk a mile in their shoes, so to speak. This seems to be the approach co-writer/director RaMell Ross (“Hale County This Morning, This Evening”) and co-writer Joslyn Barnes (“Soundtrack for a Revolution,” “Zama”) have taken to tell the story of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel of the same name, “Nickel Boys.”
Set in 1962 in Florida, the film follows Elwood Curtis, played by Ethan Herisse (“Miss Virginia,” “When They See Us”), a young African American boy who’s sentenced to spend his youth at the Nickel Academy reform school in south Florida after an incident wherein he’s believed to be the accomplice in a case of grand theft auto. While at the academy, he meets Turner, played by Brandon Wilson (“The Way Back”), a more cynically inclined young African American boy, and the pair become friends as they try to survive life at Nickel, a school secretly known for using its students for convict labor, as well as beating, raping, and sometimes killing its students when reprimanding them.
Ross’s decision to shoot this film entirely in first person is a radical one, and it leads to some of the film’s best aspects as well as some of its most debilitating. Firstly, it allows the viewer to truly engage with the reality of the piece. It again goes back to that idea of walking a mile in someone’s shoes. The results are a more visceral world to be experienced throughout the piece. Cinematographer Jomo Fray (“Selah and the Spades,” “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”) and Ross work together to allow the work to flourish outside of this restriction, to mixed results.
Again, while the tale does become more visceral, it also becomes harder to connect with either of its lead characters given the convention that you’re only seeing one of them at a time. A handful of scenes play out from both perspectives, going through it from one point of view before repeating a few minutes later beat for beat. It creates a more fleshed out deconstruction of each boy, but these kinds of moments are few and far between. Make no mistake, it is a thrilling and engaging way to shoot the film, and it does work extremely well, but makes it tough to emotionally connect with Elwood and Turner.
Wilson is utterly fantastic, bringing the film’s most complicated emotions to bear in a way that feels honest and true to every fiber of Turner’s being. Herisse is also fantastic, but it's harder to notice his performance between the two boys as the film is mostly from his perspective. His vocal performance is still excellent, but it's harder to tie it to an emotional performance since we see his face less than Turner’s. Daveed Diggs (“Blindspotting,” “The Little Mermaid (2023)”) plays a grown-up Elwood, and his adult reckoning with his past is a deeply effective and fantastic thing to see evolve. The film’s supporting cast are all good, but settle more into background roles, so it's more difficult to pick them out, existing to supplement the tale rather than stand out themselves. Fred Hechinger (“Pam & Tommy,” “Thelma”), as Har per a fellow student, does still carve out a notable performance though, despite the limited screentime he has.
The musical score from Alex Somers (“Captain Fantastic,” “Fresh”) and Scott Alario (“Hale County This Morning, This Evening”) helps to establish the film’s surrealist nature exceptionally well. By layering in various sound effects and naturalistic cues, the music follows the film’s most unique aspect well. That aspect is its more dreamlike atmosphere; while the film does have a clear plot that moves from beginning to end, spliced throughout are various moments of surrealist and borderline dreamlike imagery. Like the music, it's a way for Ross to communicate the film’s feelings. Ross’s work to communicate this through the imagery rather than through dialogue seems to almost be a reaction to the first-person perspective, as if they’re attempting to compensate for the lesser natural emotional connection. It's almost as if the film is reacting to the differing emotional approaches the two boys take, shutting down or fighting back, to deal with their surroundings, and reacts with the most powerful of filmmaking techniques: auditory and visual beauty.
“Nickel Boys” is an exceptionally visceral and borderline surrealist feature that makes stars out of Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson, when they are on stage. It might be tougher to connect to and the supporting cast fades into the background a bit, but RaMell Ross’s debut fictional feature makes for a fantastic showcase of imagery and feeling. It’s a film that wraps you in such a specific vibe and atmosphere that it becomes impossible to look away from. It’s a unique experience, and it is all but guaranteed to captivate your senses even if it doesn’t captivate your emotions. 4.5/5
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