RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys uses an inventive technique to reveal just how deeply felt racism is. The Oscar-nominated film deploys a first-person approach, in which the experiences of two Black teenagers in 1960s America are seen entirely through their point of view.
The effect is achieved by strapping cameras to the adolescents. Although initially jarring, the device gives a vivid sense of not just how discrimination is experienced, but how it is felt too.
Nickel Boys is based on the acclaimed Colson Whitehead novel of the same name. RaMell Ross’s screenplay, written along with Joslyn Barnes, goes beyond conventional adaptation, erasing the distance between character and viewer.
We see Elwood’s world as he sees it – tough but loving too, challenging but equally fulfilling. In the classroom, Elwood’s teacher reminds students of the Civil Rights movement raging outside. Elwood’s grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) is proud that he will be leaving home for a technical school.
Elwood (Ethan Herisse) never gets there, instead landing up in the Nickel Academy reform school. His crime: he took a lift from the wrong Black man.
At Nickel Academy, the perspective expands to include Turner (Brandon Wilson). The film alternates between these two teenagers. Through their interactions, we see each of them as the other sees them as well as the wrongdoings being committed at the school by its racist officials. Forced labour, sexual abuse and wrongful deaths – the horrors at Nickel Academy get greater urgency because of the storytelling.
Apart from putting viewers in the shoes of Elwood and Turner, the subjective narrative has a few other functions. Elwood and Turner are bearing direct witness to a lived experience of systemic injustice.
The first-person technique is also a way to show how disorienting it is to be Black in America, how security can be upended overnight, how being Black can be a crime in itself. RaMell Ross provides visual relief by including clips of speeches and protests by Black leaders and clips from films that have previously explored Black lives.
Nickel Boys is available on Prime Video. The 140-minute film, which is nominated for Best Picture and Writing (Adapted Screenplay) Oscars, takes some getting used to. Once the shooting style becomes apparent, Nickel Boys takes viewers on an unusual journey of hope and heartbreak. Style and substance are inseparable in a film that gives the notion of empathy and identification renewed meaning.
Also start the week with these films:
‘Touch’ is a moving drama about the search for a long-lost love
‘The Girl with the Needle’ is a superbly crafted, haunting fable
‘The Order’ is a gripping exploration of America’s white militia problem
