RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys (2024) is a film based on the 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Both the film and the book centre around two boys in Jim Crow-era Florida.

Nickel Boys begins by introducing us to Elwood, an idealistic teenager who lives with his grandmother. He believes that the world is deeply good and is inspired by Dr. King’s vision of America’s future. He is a high achiever and is chosen for a programme that teaches college classes early to gifted young students. However, one small mistake sentences him to Nickel Academy – an abusive juvenile reform school. Here he meets another boy his age, Turner, with whom he forms a close bond. Turner is a cynical student with no family. His lived experience of constant abuse and isolation have led him to believe that the evils of Nickel Academy reflect the true nature of American society, and that this will never change.

Nickel Academy is based on the real-life Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, which had a history of brutal beatings, sexual abuse, and murder. In 2012, anthropology students from the University of South Florida discovered 55 graves on the school’s grounds. More and more graves have been found in years since, including 27 as recently as 2019. Three times as many black students as white students died at the school.

“The first-person perspective allows us, in some way, to be Elwood and Turner”

Beyond the book’s excellent, emotionally devastating source material, what makes Nickel Boys exceptional is Ross’ choice to tell this story in a very experimental fashion. This is especially reflected in Ross’ and cinematographer Jomo Fray’s ingenious use of a special kind of point of view they call “sentient perspective”. This first-person perspective allows us, in some way, to be Elwood and Turner.

Almost the entirety of the film is filmed through this perspective, which allows the viewer to experience events with the characters, not just to watch the tragedy unfold as a third person voyeur. While it isn’t a complete reinvention of cinematic form – it owes some credit to fellow POV films like Lady in the Lake (1946) and Gaspar Noe’s bonkers Enter the Void (2009) – it does craft its POV shots differently than many of its predecessors. Ross and Fray utilise long lenses and shallow depth of field to give a more honest intuition of what the characters are experiencing. They understand that we don’t see the world in widescreen with balanced focus; we instead glance around, focusing on smaller details around us.

Through this sentient perspective, Ross and Fray create what can be described as “cinematic poetry”. There are images here that beg comparisons to true classics. The film starts with a montage of Elwood’s early childhood: memories of lying in the grass staring at the trees are interspersed with memories of the last time he saw his mother and father (here, it seems, there is clear inspiration from Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (2011)).

“The merits of Nickel Boys transcend Excel spreadsheets and film accounting”

The filmmakers don’t just use this technique to just create beautifully composed images, they use it to generate huge amounts of audience empathy. This is particularly moving in the first-person hug sequences, which manage to communicate centuries of black pain and solidarity in one single movement. Ross and Fray know that this hug is cinematic gold, and you know it too (it is refreshing to see black filmmaking so unashamedly confident). It is used many times throughout the film, each time somehow to even greater effect than the last. I promise that the last one, which accompanies the film’s ending, will tear your heart in two.

The approach to violence in the film is also remarkable, as Ross moves us past the brutal violence of his black/historic/tragic predecessors to something greater. While there are fantastic films that have used this grisly violence in the past to raise awareness for similarly important stories (think 12 Years a Slave (2013)), Ross is not interested in giving the audience catharsis through a re-dramatisation of historical black torture.

The film instead breaks away from the first-person during violent sequences and finds power in archival images – exhumed graves and their contents: marbles, buttons, pennies; photos of real students at Dozier school; a facial approximation of a 10 to 12-year-old boy based on remains in a grave – here it achieves ecstatic truth.

I could honestly go on forever about this film, but my one wish is for more people to see it. We unfortunately live in a world where box office is an important metric for a film’s success, and Nickel Boys has so far underperformed in this regard. However, the merits of Nickel Boys transcend Excel spreadsheets and film accounting. Is it too early to name the film of the decade? After watching this film a second time, I don’t think so.

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