I was looking forward to seeing the cinematic adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed 2019 novel about two young Black men stuck in a brutal reform school in 1960s Florida. (The Nickel Academy is modeled on an actual Florida school, now thankfully closed, at which students—especially those of color –were long badly mistreated, sometimes sexually assaulted, and even murdered.)
The story of Nickel Boys seemed an important one, and I was fascinated by reports that the film was shot entirely through what filmmakers call POV (or point of view), so that the world of young Elwood and Turner was shown exclusively through their eyes. In other words, the audience would see precisely what the characters themselves were seeing, as a way of drawing us into their lived experience. Movies have included this technique almost from the beginning: when the hero is gazing at a lovely vista, or a pretty girl, or a herd of bison, we briefly glimpse these things as though we shared his exact perspective. But, under the direction of RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys pushes this conceit a great deal further, telling virtually his entire story subjectively.
Clearly, Ross’s goal is to pull us in to the lives of two unfortunate young men by immersing us in the sights and sounds of what they experience. Critics have responded to his attempt with enthusiasm, nominating Nickel Boys for many awards. The Film Academy too was suitably impressed, placing the film among its ten nominees for Best Picture. I gather that—for whatever reason—the Directors Guild was less admiring. Ross was not among the five nominees for the Guild’s top award this year, nor was he chosen by the Academy’s directors branch as one of the five up for the Best Director Oscar.
I saw Nickel Boys in the company of three other moviegoers. One had read the novel; two had not. Though I had not read Whitehead’s work, I did have a sense of what the novel was about and what the filmmaker was trying to accomplish. All of us came away frustrated, feeling that we’d been bombarded by visuals that didn’t always make sense, and that the basic storyline had eluded us. Yes, there were things to admire, particularly in Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s sympathetic portrayal of Elwood’s grandmother. And I see why it was an attractive challenge to show Elwood bombarded by the world around him, including televised shots of freedom riders and Martin Luther King’s soaring speeches. Mostly, though, I found myself constantly aware of the camera’s tricks, of how the film relied on mirrors and shiny surfaces to occasionally let us see the two Nickel Boys of the story rather than just hearing them speak. Frankly, it all made me a bit dizzy.
There’s a major scene near the end, one that’s setting up what is going to be a key revelation. It takes place in a bar, and the two characters in conversation are both older now—and both survivors of the hellish Nickel Academy. They’re surprised (and not entirely glad) to recognize one another, though both seem to be painfully making their way in the outside world. For reasons that come clear only later, one has his back to the camera throughout the entire conversation. Was I paying attention to what they were saying? Or to the emotion beneath their words? Well, I tried to. But I kept being distracted by struggling to figure out whose point of view we were sharing, through whose eyes we were seeing this. That’s what happens when a movie puts style ahead of substance.
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