Film: “Nickel Boys” directed by RaMell Ross

Colson Whitehead’s novel “Nickel Boys” was a fairly straightforward story of a young Black teen in Alabama who was mistakenly arrested while hitchhiking on his way to college in the 1960s, and who was then confined to a brutal Florida reform school.

Would that this brutal tale were told with some degree of clarity in the 2024 movie version directed by RaMell Ross. The film is so artsy, it could win a full four-year scholarship to Pratt Institute.

Ross filmed the story from the POV of Elwood (Ethan Herisse), the young Black protagonist. As a result, for the first 30 minutes of the movie, you have no idea what he looks like. This is a shame because when the camera does turn around and focus on Elwood, you see his sad soulful eyes, which speak volumes.

Elwood doesn’t make many friends with the other juvis at the Nickel Academy, which is modeled after the real-life Dozier School for Boys, a monstrously abusive institution on whose grounds nearly a hundred burials were discovered in recent years. His only goal is to somehow survive and return to his beloved grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) who raised him and is trying to help him get released from Nickel.

While inside, Elwood does meet the laid-back cynic Turner (an incredibly good Brandon Wilson), a Houston native who’s on his second stint at Nickel and has no illusions about getting out. Turner shares survival tactics with Elwood, which proves helpful given the torturous punishments meted out by the director, Mister Spencer (Hamish Linklater) and his crew. These punishments include being shoved inside a giant washing machine.

I’m offering this plot outline as a way of helping you better appreciate the film (should you decide to see it) because “Nickel Boys” defines the word obfuscation. The narrative is interrupted by inconsequential random images that Ross admitted in an interview that he “just made up.” These images include an orange hanging from a tree, a deck of cards being shuffled, and bewildering shots of a rocket in space—often at weird angles.

The film also features Daveed Diggs (“Hamilton”) whom you also don’t recognize till the end because his back is turned to the viewer whenever he appears in the film

If it’s not entirely clear from my review, “Nickel Boys” is not a conventional film, with frank portrayals of the horrid conditions at the academy. It’s an attempt at conveying that in a different way. But there’s good different and bad different, and this film exemplifies the latter.

“Nickel Boys” was lionized at both Toronto and the New York Film Festivals so perhaps I’m the outlier here. But my question is this: why should I or you have to work at a story that’s so inherently clear and very moving? That should be obvious. Unlike the film.

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