NYFF Review: ‘Nickel Boys’ Mesmerizes With Malick-Influenced Narrative, Visuals

Based on the 2019 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead which chronicled the horrific acts perpetrated at the Dozier reform school in Florida, RaMell Ross’s striking new film, Nickel Boys opens this year’s New York Film Festival.

Set in Tallahassee in the early Jim Crow ‘60s and the 2000s in flash forwards, the film follows a young African-American teen, Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), a smart and gifted student who gets into the wrong car one day and ends up in a nightmarish segregated institution where every moment could mean death. While at Nickel Academy (Dozier, fictionalized), he bonds with Turner (Brandon Wilson) a fellow student who becomes quite a significant character.

The Terrence Malick-like narrative structure of the first half of Nickel Boys invites/forces the audiences to empathize with Elwood by seeing things through his eyes. We then shift to another character’s POV for reasons that become clearer/muddier near the film’s conclusion. And Ross, then, mixes it up. The results are both mesmerizing, frustrating and exhausting—and if you’re prone to motion-sickness, the handheld, shaky-cam technique may have you looking away often.

Considering the heinous atrocities committed at Dozier — horrible abuses suffered by the boys and unmarked graves discovered decades later — I wanted to be more roughed up emotionally. Instead, I was left with this great sense of injustice and outrage, but I wasn’t able to connect it to any character. The contemporary scenes with Daveed Diggs, which I won’t detail, are too sparse and fleeting to be potent.

What the film is successful at is how, especially in the early scenes, we do experience what Elwood experiences, whether it’s the necessity to look down when he’s in the presence of his racist white superiors or him simply gazing at his surroundings — nature –with an exciting fascination.

The one stand-out performance in the film is by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Elwood’s grandma Hattie. She’s heartbreaking, especially in a segment where she travels to visit Elwood, isn’t allowed visitation and spends some time with Turner instead, requesting a hug. Her anguish melts into grandmotherly comfort to a boy with no family. It’s a heartbreaking and nuanced moment. Ellis-Taylor continues to do powerful work with little screen time.

Nickel Boys reminded me of The Brutalist in the sense that it’s a film I admire for its cinematic ambitions and technical aims more than one I could fully appreciate or embrace.

Nickel Boys will have a limited theatrical release starting October 25 before later streaming on Prime Video.