If I had a Nickel for every Boy… (CREDIT: Courtesy of Orion Pictures)
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Starring: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs
Director: RaMell Ross
Running Time: 140 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for Racism and Authoritarianism
Release Date: December 13, 2024 (New York Theaters)/December 20, 2024 (Los Angeles Theaters)
What’s It About?: Young Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) has a promising future ahead of him in 1962 Florida. He’s excited about heading off to college, but then an unfortunate encounter leads to a false accusation and a stint at the brutal reform school Nickel Academy, where he befriends a fellow student/inmate named Turner (Brandon Wilson). Elwood seems more or less confident that he’ll be able to leave eventually, although the truth soon hits him hard as he realizes that he’ll need to be particularly crafty if he wants to return to a life of freedom anytime soon. Meanwhile, the much more hardened Turner has come to accept that the only way to escape before “graduating” is in a body bag. And as bad as all that sounds, occasional flashes to the future reveal that even darker practices are afoot at this institution.
What Made an Impression?: The Power and Limits of POV: If you’re a scholar of filmmaking techniques, you’ll notice something right away that makes Nickel Boys unique. On the other hand, if you’re a complete novice regarding the language of film, you still might notice something, even if you don’t quite have the vocabulary for it. That’s because director/co-writer RaMell Ross and his cinematographer Jomo Fray decided to shoot this whole dang thing from a first-person point of view, as if the camera were strapped to the heads of a couple of the main characters. We mostly follow Elwood’s perspective, but about halfway through, it alternates between his and Turner’s POV. I found this approach more interesting than mesmerizing, although I have noticed that plenty of my colleagues were much more blown away. While it didn’t work on me as well as it could have, it’s definitely not ostentatious; Nickel Boys is essentially about the reconstruction of traumatic memories, so it makes sense to strictly limit the available information in this fashion.
Digging Up the Dirt: So is there any chance that Elwood and/or Turner make it out of Nickel alive? Feel free to skip this paragraph if you want to go in having absolutely no idea, but if you don’t mind being teased a bit more, I will say that the glimpses of what happens decades later are both seamless and tantalizingly detached. They’re focused on a surreptitious investigation into Nickel that has the “trust no one” vibe of classic X-Files. There aren’t any aliens of cryptids, but there’s enough institutional malfeasance to make it feel unnervingly supernatural. The ideas at play in this movie won’t come as a surprise to anyone whose eyes are open, but chances are it will still leave you with a feeling you won’t be able to shake.
Nickel Boys is Recommended If You Like: Big Formal Swings
Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Points of View
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