Nickel Boys

It’s 1962 in Tallahassee and a young black boy Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) dreams of going to college. He is encouraged by an inspirational teacher, doted on by his loving grandmother and his political awakening takes place at the time of the civil rights movement, but one minor infraction sees his dreams shattered as he is sent to the Nickel Reformatory. Here he will be subjected to a system of racism and abuse that continues the violence of the days of slavery. Here he will also find friendship in the shape of Turner (Brandon Wilson), a young man who shares Elwood’s quiet will and need to survive.

Cinema is about perspective. As an audience, we enter different realities and live different experiences. The placement of the camera is part of establishing this perspective, moving away from the fixed angle of a theater seat. This is something exclusive to cinema. The God point of view, the Dutch angle, the dolly zoom and the split Doppler effect are just some examples which subtly or not so subtly do this.

RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel The Nickle Boys takes a radical approach to perspective adopting multiple first person POVs. First person is used rarely. The 1947 film noir Lady in the Lake employed it as did Gaspar Noe in Enter the Void and the videogame-like action film Hardcore Henry. But here, there is no sense of gimmick. Ross is putting us into a world to experience as well as witness a historic injustice. We see the world vividly and powerfully, but that opens us up to an acute vulnerability which racism and institutional cruelty exploits. This is the most cinematic of adaptations and yet paradoxically it acutely replicates that feeling of living in someone else’s head which books give you. It is a unique film, moving, traumatic, radical and humane.

This film was chosen by movie critic and author John Bleasdale.