Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!
As we approach the end of the year, I realize that if I’m going to finish my Oscar chores, I need to get on the last couple of movies I haven’t seen. I started to watch Nickel Boys a few months ago, and then dropped off. This has nothing to do with the quality of the film. It has everything to do with the fact that it feels like this country is regressing, and movies that deal with oppression, racism, and similar topics are more overwhelming than normal right now. And make no mistake—this is very much a movie about racism and civil rights.
What’s frustrating here is that in a fair and just world, it wouldn’t be that story. We’re going to spend most of our time with Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), who is a promising student who appears poised for academic success. He is accepted into a study program at an HBCU, and while hitchhiking to campus, is picked up by a man driving a stolen car. When they are pulled over, Elwood, who is a minor, is accused and convicted of being the man’s accomplice. As a minor, he can’t be sent to prison, so he is instead sent to a reform school called Nickel Academy.
On the surface, the young men at Nickel Academy are told that they can be released for good behavior. The reality is that no one leaves Nickel Academy—at least not the Black convicts—until they turn 18. The Black inmates are treated badly and essentially ignored while the white students are given decent quarters and food. The main reason that no one leaves Nickel early is that the facility hires out their inmates as convict labor, none of which goes to the students. There are also some suggestions of sexual abuse.
Elwood soon attaches himself to Turner (Brandon Wilson), and the two young men are diametrically different. Elwood believes in the Civil Rights Movement (current for the era of the film) and is inspired by non-violent actions taken by protesters. Turner sees very little difference between being inside Nickel Academy and outside of it, save that for inside the prison, people don’t have to pretend to be something that they are not.
Nickel is a brutal place. When Elwood is beaten by another student, he is assumed to be just as guilty, and is beaten as punishment for being in a fight. Outside of the facility, his grandmother attempts to hire a lawyer to help, but the lawyer steals her money and disappears. A fellow inmate fails to take a dive in a boxing match, losing the school’s superintendent (Hamish Linklater) a bunch of money, so the student is quietly disappeared. Elwood, dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement, starts to take notes about the mistreatment that he is suffering and the money that is being made on his back.
The story is intercut with jumps to the adult Elwood (Daveed Diggs), who is now running a business in New York City. In the late 1980s, unmarked graves are found on the grounds of Nickel Academy, and Elwood takes interest in the world that he left behind and finding justice for those who never left the grounds.
It's always the case for me that when I look at a film like this one, I wonder about a lack of acting nominations. With this film, it seems likely that there aren’t really any roles that qualify as a lead role. Elwood and Turner are both frequently “on screen” in the sense that we are seeing things from their perspective. But it would feel wrong to think of them as being supporting actors, either—they’re in a sort of weird limbo in that sense, not quite lead but more lead than supporting.
Director RaMell Ross seems like a bigger snub. This is Ross’s first feature-length film that isn’t a documentary, and it feels like a mature vision, one that has years of experience behind it in the director’s chair. Filming from a first=person perspective is very powerful in this film, because it puts us not in the position of witnessing these terrible events, but of experiencing them first-hand, since we are forced to see so many of them from the point of view of either Elwood or Turner.
Nickel Boys is a frustrating film to watch for exactly this reason. We are forced into the position that Elwood and Turner live in every day, a world that they can’t escape. The system is not merely stacked against them, but is engineered to fail them and to grind them up. And that’s what we are forced to see, that overwhelming presence that will destroy the lives of hundreds of young men in the name of “care” and “progress.”
This is worth your time. It’s worth everyone’s time, even if it’s frustrating.
Why to watch Nickel Boys: Stories like this are always important.
Why not to watch: It’s infuriating, and even more so now based on where we appear to be heading.
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