Nickel Boys (2025.8, Unique , Stimulating )

Nickel Boys – Michael’s Moments

Elwood: Why are you coming with me?

Turner: [sarcastically) They snatch you up in a hot minute, dumb as you are.

I’m guessing that Nickel Boy’s director RaMell Ross really isn’t as interested in this story as in how he wants to tell it.  After all, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of movies about the injustices suffered by Black people.  (He even quotes an earlier movie, The Defiant Ones, starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis.)  What Ross really wants to explore is how cinema can be used to stimulate the emotions that come with these stories through the particular characteristics that only moviemaking can provide.   He laid out his manifesto six years ago with his unique documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, where he made it clear that he wants to stretch the limits of cinematic techniques to tell a story in ways that only a filmmaker can do.  

Of course, I am not trying to argue that the brutality of racism and segregation in the U.S. is not a problem, nor that it hasn’t had long-lasting and very damaging effects on Black consciousness.  We understand from Nickel Boys how the slights and injustices in Nickel Boys compound to produce a moral stain on our history that, it seems, can never be erased, and, unfortunately, seems to be re-emerging in our current political and social world.  But, as important as this issue has been and continues to be in our world, this isn’t the reason to see this movie.

See it, instead, as an enlightened experiment in how to use filmmaking to stimulate emotions.  How contrasting scenes of stunning natural beauty with the ugliness of institutional racism leaves one torn and upset inside with a distinct motivation to do something to counter it.  Notice how an alligator walking the gutters of a city street emerges from a hidden scene that suggests something bad.  And notice how the same alligator, flopping its tail in a Nickel Academy classroom, is simply not noticed except by several of the boys who are standing on their chairs in order to avoid becoming lunch.

And pay particular attention to the scene when three boys are taken to the “White House” very late at night to pay for their mistakes that day.  We know what is happening, and in a lesser movie, we would probably see the belt penetrate their backs.  But Ross doesn’t stoop to such obvious devices.  Instead, his camera transitions to the white walls of the room where, buried amid the spattered blood, we see the haunting faces of the boys who have suffered the same fate.  The pain and the horror are so much more effective.

Ross and his cinematographer and editor have stitched together an amazing film that uses the magic of cinema to convey emotion.  Yes, there is a story to be told, and there is even a twist at the end, but you feel the pain of these people by the superior use of movie technique.  An excellent film.

Nickel Boys – Story and Tone:

RaMell Ross directed Nickel Boys and penned the script with Joslyn Barnes.  Although this is Ross’s first foray into narrative filmmaking, he excited the Oscar world six years ago with his documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening.  Of that film I wrote “ the viewer isn’t being told a story – he is being given clues and hints that have to be combined inside the viewers mind.  This is a new kind of movie experience that won’t work for everyone.”  I could write almost the same thing about this film!

There is a story here.  It is about a young black teenager, Elwood, who is wrongfully convicted of car theft and sent to Nickel Academy, a not so great Florida reform school situated among orange trees in the early to mid 60s.  There he is bullied by some of the other “enrollees” and abused by the mostly white staff.  Through it all, though, he retains a belief that, at some point, justice will prevail and he will be released.  He is befriended and protected, somewhat, by another boy, Turner, who finds Elwood’s innocence a charming offset to his own deep cynicism.  It is the deep contrast between these two nearly opposite viewpoints that provides the main theme for Nickel Boys as we see them work, play, and talk about their situations.  

Nickel Boys frequently plays as a documentary.  And it is based on the real life story of the Florida School for Boys (aka Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys) which opened in 1900 and shut down in 2011 after several investigations suggesting at least 100 children had died while being held in custody.  They later found 55 bodies in unmarked graves (referred to as Boot Hill).  They had a White House which is also mentioned in the movie where boys endured forms of “corporal punishment”.  So the movie could easily be seen as what is often called a docudrama – the story is real!

The script is an adaptation of a book (which I have not read) by Colton Whitehead, one of only four people to receive two Pulitzer Prizes for fiction!

Related Movies:  Hale County This Morning, This Evening (Direction/Screenplay) Strong Island (Screenplay)

Nickel Boys – Storytellers

I am unfamiliar with either of the two lead actors, both young and relatively inexperienced.  I suspect, though, that we will see them again.  Their jobs in this movie were a bit unusual as they had to act and look towards the camera, and not at each other.  I have seen Ellis Taylor, as Hattie, Elwood’s grandmother, in earlier movies.  The acting in Nickel Boys is more than satisfactory, but isn’t the reason to see this movie.

Elwood (Ethan Herisse) – Elwood Curtis is the idealist and the one who honestly believes that justice will one day arrive and free him from his unlucky situation.  A believer in political action including civil disobedience, Elwood admires Martin Luther King Jr. and views the Black man’s plight as a temporary phase in the arc towards justice. 

Turner (Brandon Wilson) – Turner is the cynic.  He virtually adopts Elwood when he arrives at Nickel Academy and does his best to teach him how to survive the system.  It’s not clear exactly why he takes on the project, but they do become good friends.  Wilson’s portrayal suggests he more than understands Turner’s pessimism.

Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) – In a delightful supporting role, Ellis-Taylor plays Elwood’s grandmother, Hattie/Nana.  Her role is one of clarifying and personifying the emotional effects of the injustices  on Elwood.  We feel the pain that racial brutality inflicts on every member of a Black family as she attempts to deal with and understand her losses.

Related Movies: King Richard; The Color Purple; If Beale Street Could Talk (Ellis-Taylor)

Nickel Boys – Movie Magic

Nickel Boys stands as a testament to the full power of what cinema can do and what makes the medium different from all other art forms.  What this movie does is upend the standard definition of storytelling and offer an alternative— very movie-specific— way of articulating a story.  I’m sure it doesn’t work for some, maybe many, people, but it is an intriguing and effective effort at rendering a story that isn’t a documentary, but maintains the “truthiness” that we expect.  What we viewers most want out of a movie is something that makes us feel like we are there with the time, place, and characters in the movie.  We judge a movie based on how well it transports us into its world, regardless of how distant it might be in time, geography, or imagination.  

Most fictional movies do that by means of setting and how the characters are physically portrayed, i.e. costumes, makeup, and hairstyling.  RaMell Ross, though, has chosen a different way of putting his viewers into his worldview, and that is by distinctly cinematographic techniques.  His visions are implemented in Nickel Boys through unique camera mechanics (by Jomo Fray) and some terrific editing (Nicholas Monsour) incorporating multiple non-narrative, but contemporary, events.  In many ways, this is an expansion and further development of Ross’s work in his Oscar-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (which I gave 4 stars)!  How does Nickel Boys do this?

It happens in several incredible ways.  In the first place, it is filmed in an aspect ratio of 4:3, which is exactly the screen dimensions of the TV’s in the 1960s, the time of the story.  Then there is the interposition of incredibly beautiful imagery contrasting with the cruel and brutal story.  There is the opening scene of blue sky, green leaves, and oranges, which suggests a beautiful world of possibilities.  And there is a scene later on of the delicate complexity of spider webs. These scenes serve the cinematic purpose of focusing the viewer’s emotional state so they can better absorb the trauma of what follows.

The most significant statement in this film— and the reason it has surfaced in everyone’s attention— is the point of view.  There has always been a cardinal rule in filmmaking that you never break the fourth wall, meaning that the actors never really look at the camera.  Forget all that in Nickel Boys.  The movie is (almost) entirely filmed as if you are looking through the eyes of one of the characters.  But if you are actually “in the head” of a character, then you are also being looked at and acted upon— the actors are looking at and touching YOU!  This use of a camera technique is highly unusual and will be difficult for some people.  But, in Nickel Boys, it works.  After the montage of scenes to establish Elwood’s background, the first 35 minutes of the movie are presented through Elwood’s eyes— literally.  Then we get a repeat of the exact same lunch scene from Turner’s view.  The movie succeeds in getting the viewer to understand the difference of individual perspectives.  And then we shift, chronologically two decades in the future, and, instead of being in the head of our main character, we are behind him a couple of feet as if we are a consciousness looking over him and his actions.  There is a stunning display of camera technique where the two boys look up at the camera but we see their own reflection in the mirror with no camera anywhere in view.  The camera perspective is a huge part of how the story is told, and, honestly, I don’t understand why this movie wasn’t nominated for its innovative cinematography.

And there’s that alligator.  At least four times, we see a live alligator in unlikely spots.  My first thought was how strange this idea was, especially as we stay fixed on the animal for several moments.  The effect serves as a transitional pause of sorts where the viewer has an opportunity to just absorb the moment before moving on to the next scene.  Think of it as a cinematic equivalent to cleansing the palate between plates in a multi-course meal.

Related Movies: (None that I am aware of)

Nickel Boys – World Building

Nickel Boys didn’t receive any nominations in the World Building categories, and frankly, I don’t think it was the filmmaker’s intent to do so.  Although it was filmed in Louisiana, they seemed to have done a very effective job at re-creating the Florida ‘reform school’ where the fictional representation might have actually occurred.  But still, with a budget of just $20 million, they managed to locate appropriate automobiles and televisions to give the feel of the mid-1960s.  The clothes worn by the school boys were appropriately tattered and used.  It could easily feel like you were there.

Importantly, though, is that Nickel Boys doesn’t build its world in the same way most movies do.  Instead of settings, costumes, and hairstyling, the movie transports you to the Deep South 60s by constantly and sometimes randomly interjecting real-life scenes from television broadcasts of civil rights moments (Martin Luther King Jr. speeches) and technical spectacles, particularly the Apollo 8 mission to the moon.  This cinematographic world-building is incredibly effective as it portrays not just the contrasts between the white and black world of the 60s, but the similarity of the circumstances now!

Related Movies: One Night in Miami (Makeup & Hairstyling)

Nickel Boys – Sound & Music

The musical score for Nickel Boys is from the same composers who worked with Ross on his documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening.  Using contemporary compositions that are largely dissonant and often disconcerting, I didn’t find anything really remarkable about the music except how it complements the experimental and contrapuntal imagery.  I did think the inclusion of a rendition of White Christmas, sung by a black children’s choir, to be particularly effective.  Kudos to the sound team, particularly for the slightly muffling sounds of the fan in the White House!

Related Movies:  Nyad; American Symphony; May December; Blonde (Sound)/ Hale County This Morning, This Evening; Causeway (Music)

Nickel Boys – What Others Think