{"id":26381,"date":"2024-10-01T23:54:29","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T03:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=26381"},"modified":"2024-10-01T23:54:29","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T03:54:29","slug":"nyff-nickel-boys-review-ramell-ross-triumphs-in-daring-adaptation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=26381","title":{"rendered":"NYFF\/ Nickel Boys Review: RaMell Ross Triumphs in Daring Adaptation"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s in the glimpses tragic and poetry happen. In the beginning of RaMell Ross\u2019s extraordinary first narrative feature\u00a0Nicke Boys<\/strong>, a realization of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, which opens the New York Film Festival, the filmmaker creates a world unlike any other. A child\u2019s hand holds a leaf in the grass, a woman picks up pieces of glass from a floor, a bruised knee in a bathtub, Martin Luther King states \u201cHow long, not long\u201d in a TV box in the store window. Immediately you know, this is exceptional.<\/p>\n

Not long after we realize we see what a boy sees. Literally. Shot in first-person perspective we follow Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and what unfolds through his eyes. He is an African American teenage boy in Tallahassee, Florida, living with his grandmother, Hattie (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor who deserves another Oscar nomination).<\/p>\n<\/ins>\n

Unlucky to be living in the height of Jim Crow 60s-era, Elwood is a bright, quiet and engaged kid finding support in Dr. Martin Luther King\u2019s words and attending community college. One incident changed his life. Innocently hitching a ride in a well-dressed black man\u2019s stolen car, that is pulled over by the police, Elwood is unjustly sentenced to the notorious real-life reform school, the Nickel Academy. We see no arrests or trials, but a clip from Stanley Kramer\u2019s\u00a0The Defiant Ones<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>(1958) in which Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis sit in a police van, is shown. The abyss begins.<\/p>\n

At the school he meets the more rebellious Turner (Brandon Wilson) who becomes his best friend. Gradually we are Turner\u2019s eyes, and see what Elwood looks like. And vice versa. At Nickel Academy, white boys play football, blacks are not allowed. It\u2019s a place of racism, abuse and dehumanization \u2013 black boys are beaten to death and officially written off as runaways. The truth has literally been buried in the ground and despite reports of the cruelty, the real school ran from 1910 to 2011.<\/p>\n

\"Nickel<\/p>\n

Colson Whitehead\u2019s novel (he also wrote\u00a0The Underground Railroad<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0filmed for television by Barry Jenkins 2021) mirrors the lives of the actual young men who attended the real-life Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianne, Florida and their reports of the abuse and horror. In the film a boy says: \u201cthere are Nickels all over, this is just one place\u201d.<\/p>\n

Instead of showing the actual violence, RaMell Ross refuses to display the character’s pain. His approach is non-exploitative with non-explosive feelings. He shows what is left unseen while shining a light on what is happening, accompanied by Scott Alario\u2019s and Alex Somers’ haunting score. Ross claims that when people go through traumatic things, they\u2019re not always looking in the eye of evil.<\/p>\n

You look where you look, and the impressions become memories in your life. His approach creates a dreamy and horrific subjectivity. With his first-person perspective, perhaps mostly successful before in Gaspar No\u00e9\u2019s\u00a0Enter the Void<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>(2009), he asks questions about where we actually look, what detail do we pay attention to, how do you not frame someone. His distinctive vision has similarity to his Oscar-nominated documentary\u00a0<\/strong>Hale County This Morning<\/strong>,\u00a0This Evening<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0(2018), where he captured the daily life for black residents in the south in a racist history.<\/p>\n<\/ins>\n

In\u00a0Nickel Boys<\/em><\/strong>, his visuals continue into a narrative. The cinematographer Jomo Fray (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt<\/em><\/strong>, 2023) captures something that cinema rarely sees. When we enter a time closer to today, showing the adulthood for men who struggle to live with the trauma, the camera is now placed behind someone\u2019s head. Ross\u2019s originality is bold and artful. In anyone else\u2019s hands it could easily have fallen into pieces.<\/p>\n

The violence is present, without being shown. The pain and the hope are in glimpses and details. Lyrical details, like a brochure slowly sliding down a wall too heavy for a magnet or a collar on a boy’s worn uniform shirt, Ross creates an unforgettable and poetic atmosphere without losing track of the actual story. We know what\u2019s going on \u2013 it\u2019s subtle and emotional, it\u2019s alive. As much as Steve McQueen’s\u00a012 Years a Slave<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0(2013) and Jenkins’\u00a0Moonlight\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(2016) made a mark,\u00a0Nickel Boys<\/em>\u00a0is a film to be talked about for a long, long time.<\/p>\n

Grade: A<\/p>\n

If you like the review, share your thoughts below!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Check out more of Niclas’ articles.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the trailer of the film.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n