Divalicious Review! Director RaMell Ross’ Intimate Innovation Captures A Lasting Friendship In Nickel Boys
By Caroline Cao | December 9, 2024 | Celebrity & Culture
The first shots of Nickel Boys—directed by Gothams Award winner RaMell Ross with cinematography by Jomo Fray—are pivotal to its searing intimacy. It opens from the point of view of a young African-American child, Elwood Curtis (Ethan Cole Sharp), growing up in the 1960s. He stares at televised news of the Civil Rights Movement and at his grandmother, Hattie (a loving Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), who is laboring across several jobs.
These life experiences culminate at the point where he reaches the age when he stares at his Black arm in contemplation. We feel as he does. We feel as it dawns on him that his world is going to be rough for him because of his Blackness. We feel that consciousness tumble down on his innocence. The white supremacist system soon ensnares him.
Falsely accused of being an accomplice to car theft, Elwood is ripped from his grandmother and forced into Nickel Academy, a segregated reformatory in Eleanor, Florida. It unleashes scores of abuses on its Black inmates while its white inmates are provided privileges. At least Elwood does find a friend in fellow Black inmate Turner (Brandon Wilson), who knows the territory well enough that he can help Elwood survive.
Upon the boy’s meeting, the film also takes a drastic turn. The point-of-view is swapped to Turner’s as he observes Elwood’s acclimation into the harsh reformatory as they steal moments of joy and perhaps plot for justice. The effect is dizzying with Nicholas Monsour‘s editing, often conflating the two perspectives. Ross has not chosen this style as an act of confusion but as a way of illustrating the two boys’ assimilation into dyads, sharing a soul together, a bond that caps off the film’s twist.
The setting is based on the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a site where only recently unmarked graves and missing bodies are being uncovered. Throughout Nickel Boys, archival footage dips into the boy’s lives. At first, these appear to be conventional documentary inserts. Still, they assume an anchored perspective in a flash-forward (featuring Daveed Diggs in a crucial role), in a stark illustration of the past being painstakingly exhumed and reckoned with. The finale image—of a friend extending a hand—caps off the film with a spiritual reunion between the two boys.
The film is slated for a limited theatrical release on December 13.
photo credit: Amazon MGM Studios
