‘Nickel Boys’ Review: An Ode to the Life of Children in Correctional Schools

In 2012, the news of the discovery of an unmarked mass grave on the grounds of a Florida boys’ school made for brain-short-circuiting headlines. Archaeologists estimate that nearly 100 children died from violence or neglect in the first century after the detention center opened. How can we process buried grief on such a scale?

Author Colson Whitehead channeled that grief into his lightly fictionalized 2019 novel, The Nickel Boys, about two black friends at the Nickel Academy, which unearthed such beautiful emotions that it won a Pulitzer Prize. did. A straight adaptation would be a powerful work, but it’s even better to see this book in the hands of a true humanist like Ramel Roth. Making his feature debut, the director not only transforms anonymous bones into humans, he also directs them toward the camera. The audience literally sees the world through the eyes of Elwood (Ethan Herissey) and Turner (Brandon Wilson). We could not be more tightly held to their perspective.

Ross describes his visual style as an homage to “grand mediocrity.” Little moments like the spaghetti dinner, the smiling girl, and the Christmas tinsel become important, shot so grandly by cinematographer Jomo Frey. He has already made documentaries using this technique, including the Oscar-nominated “This Morning, Tonight in Hale County,” set in Alabama. The goal is not only to prove that the ordinary world is surrounded by beauty. That means his characters are actively observing it, too.

This wouldn’t seem like a radical act, except that Ross uses this technique to immortalize the lives of black Americans in the South. Outsiders tend to box people and force them to fit messages that range from exploitative to boringly benevolent. Ross releases them. The message is simply that Elwood and Turner are human beings.

The script, co-written by Roth and producer Jocelyn Burns, removes the opening prologue about Whitehead’s tragic graveyard, instead emphasizing that this will be a bittersweet celebration of life. First introduced is Elwood, who grew up in racially segregated Tallahassee in the 1960s. We get a glimpse of Ethan Cole Sharp’s world from childhood to high school, and the film moves by without any sense of urgency. That is exactly what it should be for a boy who has no reason to doubt that his freedom is near. I was taken away. he is smart He may not be as bright, sensitive, or idealistic as he appears in Whitehead’s novels, but it seems intentional to make him a more ordinary character. (Ross removed “The” from the title.)

Some people may read Whitehead’s book and think, “How could such a horrible thing happen to such a good child?” Instead, Ross wants us to ask, “Why would this happen to anyone?” These include school bullies and white boys who live in segregated areas on campus and appear to receive preferential treatment. To be precise, white students were also victims. Both student groups then joined forces and started a blog that collected enough stories of abuse. This website is referenced when the film jumps decades into the future. But Nickel Boys is kind to those who can’t face their own memories, even in its camerawork that refuses to document cruelty; it’s implied, but never shown. do not have. Sometimes, in order to endure, we swallow all the bad things and keep them inside.

Things take a turn for the worse when soon-to-be 17-year-old Elwood gets into the wrong car. He doesn’t realize he’s getting into a stolen Plymouth, and even if he could have warned him of what was about to happen, he has no idea how this one choice could derail his future. plug. But Ross knows this path will lead Elwood straight to Nickel Academy, so he uses this moment as a painful gag in which the driver (the late Taraja Ramses) figures out how to unlock the passenger door. It was expanded to. That’s something you don’t notice on first viewing. You’ll see in the second one. Like Elwood, we are naive at first and realize the danger only later.

The idea that Nickel Academy is a school by any definition of the word is a dark joke. The children are essentially enslaved to work in the fields and run illegal errands under the supervision of an employee named Harper (Fred Hechinger). It is heartbreaking that this tragedy is occurring not so long ago, when Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil rights revolution. To make matters worse, the school remained open until 2011, when it was closed due to “budget constraints.”

Elwood is so carefully drawn that it’s hard to believe you know this character at all. He’s almost too universal. His personality is best conveyed when you see his classmate Turner’s jaw set and eyes wary. Ellwood believes in MLK’s optimism for America. “It’s against the law!” he protests to Turner, a sly and funny cynic who can’t imagine things getting any better. Elwood is confident that he can overcome obstacles. Turner gave up trying to bypass them. The two argue, but they don’t always seem to hear each other. We will take turns among them, but it is up to you to decide which one to trust.

Ross and editor Nicolas Monsoor regularly cropped old black-and-white television images of NASA rockets attempting to transmit data to Earth. The motif makes no sense at all. Is it a comment on the country’s priorities? What is an example of looking up instead of around? Is it just a nice way to take a break from the horrible things happening under the tree? In the end, I settled on imagining these transitions as echoes of Alex Summers and Scott Alario’s wonderfully raw score. The vague notes sound as if they are bouncing back and forth between satellites and deteriorating over time. Their pleas will be heard.

Ross likes to feel rather than talk. There are images of students hobbling around on stilts and children who look too small to be there playing with toy soldiers in a puddle of milk. After Elwood and Turner are permanently damaged, the camera jumps out of their bodies and hovers behind their heads, showing us how Elwood, played by Daveed Diggs, has grown into a full-fledged person. This is noticeable when trying to do so. Dissociation has never been so nice. This most soul-stirring film is a mood piece. There’s a five-and-a-half-minute montage set to Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke’s jazz song “Tezeta,” but it would be mesmerizing if it were twice as long.

The visuals are great in this movie, but the sound is just as great. The first shot shows Elwood lying in the garden, looking up, and as he turns his head, we hear the sound of blades of grass tickling the back of his neck. Then I hear a noise – a bee? Flies? When crime increases, it turns into a continuous hum, a plague on the brain.

The only downside to this movie is that Roth is still learning to work with actors. The background characters are fine when they’re wandering around the lunchroom, but the point-of-view approach is tough on his leads, even talented ones like Aounjanou Ellis-Taylor, who plays Elwood’s grandmother. When there is dialogue, which thankfully is not always the case, it takes the form of one person staring into the lens and waiting their turn to speak. The really awkward moments start like in audition tapes where off-camera casting assistants are delayed in saying their lines.

The only great dialogue scene is when Diggs sits across the bar from a Nickel College alumnus. Played by Craig Tate in a phenomenal cameo, his nervous twitches showcasing the broken boy inside the man. The two survivors are elderly and isolated in their grief – lucky to be alive, but still buried. They’re so damaged that they can’t or won’t really talk about what they’ve been through. It’s so hard to look past our own traumas, but Ross shows us how they once saw themselves as simply teenagers, promised a better future. He showed me. we remember. We saw it too.