REEL | 'Nickel Boys' Reforms A Sinful Historical Perspective

"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 revealed to have essentially comitted child enslavement and other atrocities after the discovery of many unmarked graves.

Astonishingly shot almost enitrely in the first-person point-of-view and perspective, the revelatory film stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson (with Daveed Diggs as his older counterpart) as otherwise bright Black teenage boys, Elwood and Turner, sent as correctional punishment to the notorious Southern detention centre, called "Nickel Academy" here. It heartbreakingly depicts the brutality of their daily lives basically existing 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 technical form and camera framing are not a gimmick but make the source material richer and more artistic. As a montage or collection of images expressing how little we cared about the wellbeing and potentional of these young Black boys for decades, the film packs so much soulful pain.

Nickel Boys is a striking-made, artful tragedy of total devastation rooted in America's shockingly recent sins of the past. It's a viscerally gut-wrrenching 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' impressive work here. It's a challenging and harrowingly distancing film that stays with you beyond in its off-putting form.


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