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| Images courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios |
Pulitzer Prize winning historical fiction novelist Colson
Whitehead’s 2019 novel The Nickel Boys, loosely centered around
the infamous Florida School for Boys reform school where a number of racist
criminal abuses were committed usually by white officers against African
American students including but not limited to torture and murder, became a multiple
award-winning literary sensation. Incredibly
in operation from 1900 until 2011 following an investigation by the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement and the US Department of Justice shut the institution
down for good, to this day unmarked grave sites of murdered Black victims
continue to be unearthed all over University of South Florida grounds. Garnering the author his second Pulitzer Prize
win, one of only four writers to do so, it told a nonlinear narrative experience
jumping between the perspectives of two characters: aspiring idealistic high-school
student Elwood Curtis and his cynical embittered friend Turner as they navigate
and try to survive the hardships, physical and psychological abuses of the
reform school.
Though the characters and narrative are a work of fiction,
the connection it shares to still-being-uncovered criminal atrocities committed
against black reform school students who were more or less whisked off the
streets and thrown into captivity remains vitally important in righting
countless untold wrongdoings committed within the reform school grounds. More than anything, it speaks volumes to the present
American timeline of tidily sweeping civil rights violations and abuses under
the rug in plain view. As the novel was
gaining tracking among numerous literary circles including the Kurkus Prize,
Alex Award and Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, Amazon MGM Studios, Orion
Pictures and Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B Entertainment joined forces
with screenwriter-producer Joslyn Barnes and Hale County This Morning, This
Evening documentary filmmaker RaMell Ross to create perhaps the most
extraordinary, incisive and multifaceted dose of Black experiential cinema of
2024: Nickel Boys.
As with the novel, the film jumps between past-and-present
timelines, drifting between the late 1980s back to 1960s Jim Crow-era
Tallahassee, Florida as we happen upon young Black student Elwood Curtis (Ethan
Herisse) in the classroom under the tutelage of his Black teacher who
encourages the youth to ignore Southern textbook versions of history and think
freely himself. At one point Elwood even
gets involved in the Civil Rights Movement against his grandmother’s wishes
fearing retaliation. One morning,
following acceptance at a study program at an HBCU, he tries to hitchhike his
way there when he and the driver are pulled over by cops and it is discovered the
vehicle was stolen. With both arrested
and Elwood dubbed an accomplice, he is sent to the Nickel Academy reform school
which is segregated within as White students live comfortably with amenities
while Black students get the short end of the stick living in drab facilities
and are largely ignored by the scholastic department. Dealing with a piggish White superintendent
who hires out the students on ‘convict labor’ while implications of sexual
abuse of the students are dropped, Elwood eventually forms a friendship with
Turner (Brandon Wilson) whose anger and resentment of the system leans him more
towards a violent path unlike Elwood’s peaceful notions of democracy. When trying to write to the government about
the conditions of the reform school turns on deaf ears, the unlikely twosome
make a pact to try and escape with their lives.
With an ethereal and sonically overwhelming score by Scott
Alario and Alex Somers and ornate 1.33:1 Academy Ratio cinematography by All
Dirt Roads Taste of Salt cameraman Jomo Fray, Nickel Boys as a film
is very akin to Gaspar Noe’s first-person point-of-view cinema experience Enter
the Void. Jumping between Elwood and
Turner’s perspectives as they look up, down or behind themselves, you see as they
do into mirrors or when they shift their eyes away from adversarial characters
and look downward. Compounded with an
immersive Dolby Atmos sound mix which puts you in the character’s ear space
hearing what and how they sense sounds, Nickel Boys almost immediately
by design becomes an intoxicating out-of-body sensory experience where you don’t
observe Elwood and Turner so much as you walk in their shoes. There’s also subtle use of hallucinatory effects
such as a suffocating moment when one of the characters is thrown in a sweatbox
and the screen turns to stars.
In terms of acting, Nickel Boys offers numerous
gifted performances throughout, particularly of the character of Elwood who is
played as a child by Ethan Cole Sharp, then as a young adult by Ethan Herisse
and is briefly seen as an adult by Daveed Diggs. Matching him is Brandon Wilson as Turner who
becomes a companion to Elwood but has a far angrier and incendiary outlook on
his imprisonment. Perhaps the film’s
most extraordinary performer is Academy Award nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor from
King Richard as Elwood’s doting yet devastated grandmother who delivers
several impassioned soliloquys directly into the camera. Because she’s looking at Elwood, she’s
looking into our eyes and speaking to us in a number of extended takes that are
breathtaking to see unfold. Also worth mentioning
is The Last Black Man in San Francisco writer-actor Jimmie Fails as
Elwood’s encouraging schoolteacher who imbues in the youth the strive to
maintain an open inquisitive mind.
Given a limited theatrical release by Amazon MGM before
becoming a Prime Exclusive for a time until it became available on other
streaming platforms, the $23 million phantasmagorical period piece tragically
only took in a measly $3.2 million at the box office. Though it expanded somewhat during Martin
Luther King weekend, it still flew completely under the radar of cinephiles who
were lucky if they could come across a theater booking the film. Nevertheless, despite performing poorly
commercially, it did swimmingly with the critical establishment with many
including Sight & Sound naming it one of the top films of 2024. It also garnered an Academy Award nomination
for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay though it sadly lost to both categories. However it did win four of the Chicago Film
Critics Association awards including Best Director, Best Cinematography and the
Milos Stehlik Award for Breakthrough Filmmaker.
Taken on its terms as a singular audiovisual experience,
frequently intercutting preexisting footage and snippets throughout American
history into the tapestry, Nickel Boys from Plan B is perhaps the
company’s most hyperkinetic fully engaged work of motion picture art since they
produced Netflix’s Blonde. One of
the most assured and confident directorial debuts of the last five years in a
film that you don’t so much watch as you live through, Nickel Boys is at
once a terrible American tragedy whose horrors are still being uncovered while
also being an artistic triumph for Black experiential cinema bordering on the
experimental avant-garde with almost as many confrontational close-ups of
actors gazing into the camera as a Jonathan Demme film. Perhaps the best overlooked piece of Black
cinematic art since the still criminally underrated and underseen The Silent
Twins, Nickel Boys represents a new height of historical fiction
filmmaking that takes you on a difficult but nevertheless important and
fulfilling odyssey through one of America’s tragically numerous hearts of
darkness.
--Andrew Kotwicki
