Nickel Boys
Just give this movie all the awards — that is all.
*Trigger warning — this review contains mentions of abuse, systematic and institutional abuse and the suffering of young people and children.*
Jomo Fray’s cinematography, RaMell Ross’s direction and writing, along with Joslyn Barnes make this a subtle, textured story about abuse — of individuals, power, authority, class, age, resources and access to them and ethnicity. An adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel, this feels very real rather than a movie of a novel. Nor it is exploitative. Uniquely it uses beautiful cinematography with shots mostly captured from the protagonist’s point of view, and its what we don’t see, what is suggested that makes it all so horrific.
The camera very much shows us life from Elwood Curtis’s point of view — everything is child-height, fragmented, some fascinating things in sharp relief. Adult hands shuffling cards come into sharp focus, other things (like his Mother leaving) are in the background and only overheard, unclear. However, his Grandmother loves him and works hard to give him a loving and happy childhood. Elwood loves to read and quietly observes the world. His classes are a bit alarming and sent me into a whole spin of thought about politics in the classroom. On one hand the charismatic and intelligent teacher is empowering his students by playing them records of Dr Martin Luther King orating. At the same time, he’s denying them a full education and qualifications by taking over lessons in this way. Maybe expectations were low anyhow and it doesn’t matter as atleast he was teaching them something. But whatever he’s meant to be officially teaching them, he isn’t and getting the students alongside to cover the records with drumming on the desks. However, this is Florida where expectations of young black and brown men seem to be lower than low, so maybe Doctor Martin Luther King lessons are a very good thing indeed. I’m surprised at myself for thinking these things and still pondering it all through. Maybe it’s about promoting dignity in a system where there was none.
Bright, his teacher Mr Hill (Jimmie Fails) encourages Ellwood to apply for free courses at a local college. Unfortunately, he has to walk there. Given a lift by a sharply dressed man in a sleek car, they get pulled over by the police and somehow Ellwood gets convicted and sent to a reform school as accomplice in a car theft. Although he did nothing more than accept a lift from a friendly stranger.
Set against the background of the 1960’s Civil Rights protests and freedom marches, it’s hard to realise that we’re in Florida and not the Deep South. In a beautifully manicured setting, the reform school is run horrendously like an enslaved plantation — with divisions by ethnicity. Access to and the distribution of resources and knowledge also follows ethnic lines. Plus, the boys and young men are made to work — picking oranges, painting verandas and weirdly accompanying one of the guards on collection parties — money for goods. They are also increasingly exploited by those meant to be caring for them, and some are dispatched on a lonely hillside and their families told a lie that they’ve run away.
Equally disturbing is the mish-mash of age ranges all lumped in together — small boys staggering under the weight of their loads — and older teenage boys, who may be much younger than they appear. Ellwood struggles to fit in or survive until he encounters the kindness of Tanner, weighed down by an unjust sentence and his own quiet reflections. Due to Tanner’s innate decency and kindness, they become friends and allies.
Ellwood finds books again — there’s a lovely moment when he’s describing the story of Pride and Prejudice to Tanner. At the same time, the boys and young men are oppressed and victimised by those meant to be caring for them. In a triumphant moment, one of the young men refuses to throw a fight and loses one of the authorities his bet. Hearing him being proclaimed a winner may be the first time he’s been praised or celebrated. Ellwood’s Grandma tries to visit and is not allowed to see her grandson on spurious reasons, instead encountering another young man, Chatting away, perplexed by what’s happened, she gives out granny hugs and finds him thin, underfed, neglected — and like the rest of the day, can’t quite get her mind around it all. Especially when the setting seems so lush and tranquil.
Sensitively, the camera pulls away from horror — using fear of passing through the doorways, suggestion of the objects in there, of one of the ‘carer’s’ soothing his tense shoulder (hurting from beating a boy with a hefty rope). We do see one scene where guards are raping the young men, but even this is disorientated and strange. The focus is on the young men’s faces bewildered about what is happening to them. Again, from the boys point of view, we (like them) don’t quite know what’s happening — and yet we know clearly that it’s not right. It’s humiliating, brutal, vile. When Ellwood is beaten, animation is used to show how the pain fragments his spirit and soul — the horror and the pain of it. He almost resembles the photographs of Emmett Till’s poor battered body. How much longer do young black men have to suffer the camera screams at us? It’s also in the eyes of the young men looking upwards as Ellwood (and others before him) are sweated in the attic, before being taken to the hill to be dispatched and scandalously buried.
Jumping between timelines, we see the older Ellwood as well as the younger — and how the older Ellwood keeps encountering reminders of the abuse he suffered. No matter what truth will out and the site starts being excavated in an investigation of the corruption that happened there.
The film’s ending is both beautiful and shocking as the friends escape, are hunted with guns and as the history of the school is brought to light, Ellwood returns with a powerful mission to bring back his friend (and himself) to life and light.
Ethan Cole Sharp and Brandon Wilson are extraordinary as Elwood and Tanner, as they carry the whole movie. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Grandmother Hattie breaks your heart — clearly fighting her own health issues and exhaustion; her broken words that she’s let her grandson down into us. She tried to get a lawyer in place for Elwood, only be conned out of the money she’d given him to appeal Elwood’s conviction. Those playing the institution managers are equally well crafted — real (horrible) men rather than monsters or caricatures. Intriguing too is a one of the staff wives; on one hand kind, and on the other very much a Southern matriarch, keeping her distance and not above exploiting vulnerable youth to get her veranda gussied up with a fresh coat of paint.
Not sensationalist or exploitative, this is a tender, angry expose that we should care for victims of abuse (and see that this never happens in the first place). That we should stand up against evil, expose it and stop it. That lives are precious and matter so deeply, and we should care about our looked after children and young people, for juvenile offenders, for they are our children. That we need to seek the truth, to listen and see. And not be like the visiting Governors on their annual inspection and only see the nice shirts, distribution of ice cream and apparently happy, well-fed youth. That we shouldn’t look away when we see injustice and really should seek to be safe, trustworthy people and helpers. Nor should we think they deserve it and look the other way to keep the peace.
“If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That’s how he saw it, how he’d always seen things.”
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