REEL | 'Nickel Boys' Reforms A Sinful Historical Point of View

"We have to be like knights. Checkmate."

Orion Pictures / Warner Bros. Pictures

Photographer turned filmmaker RaMell Ross wondrously dramatizes historical institutional racial violence in Nickel Boys, based on the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead exploring Florida's highly abusive Dozier School, a barbaric reform school for young Black males, that operated in Florida for 111 years (until 2011) before being later revealed to have essentially comitted child slavery and other atrocities after the discovery of many unmarked graves.

Shot almost enitrely in the first-person point-of-view and perspective, the stunning film stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson (with Daveed Diggs as his older counterpart) as bright teenagers, Elwood and Turner, sent as punishment to the Southern detention centre, called "Nickel Academy" here. It depicts the brutality of their daily lives basically living in a corrupt prison for absolutely no reason other than to appease white people with few options for "graduating" out.

Adapted by Ross and Joslyn Barnes, the transformative filming technique makes its acclaimed literary material all the more immersive in its stark cinematic depiction of traumatic violence. Its form and camera framing are not a gimmick but make the source material richer and more artistic.

Nickel Boys is a striking-made, artful tragedy of total devastation rooted in America's shockingly recent sins of the past. Its visceral portrait of resilience and friendship in the face of senseless punishment with no hope or any oversight. There are few films more poignantly tragic in its beauty than Ross's work here.


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