‘Nickel Boys’ review: brutal segregation story chooses art over violence

Memory is a fickle thing but some moments make a mark that lasts forever. The waft of freshly changed linen in our childhood bedrooms, the cosy LED-glow of tree lights at Christmas time or a balmy afternoon breeze under a hot summer sky – these are the sensory vignettes that open RaMell Ross’ remarkable new film Nickel Boys. It portrays fleeting snapshots of a halcyon past like the sun-bleached pages of a family photo album.

Adapted from the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning Colson Whitehead novel of the same name, the Oscar-nominated picture’s visual beauty belies the injustice it conceals. Delving into a buried chapter of the Jim Crow-era South, Nickel Boys follows a bright young Black boy named Elwood (Ethan Herisse) who is wrongfully sent to a segregated reform school in Florida after unknowingly hitching a ride in a stolen car. Based on the real-life Arthur G. Dozier School For Boys – where nearly 100 young people died before buried in unmarked graves – decades of physical and sexual abuse are forced into the light via a story that carves out space for humanity over brutality.

Upon his arrival at the Nickel Academy, Elwood meets equally mild-mannered student Turner (Brandon Wilson), whose disillusionment on principled stands of racial injustice is very much at odds with his own. But they quickly form a close bond and rely on one another to make it through the harshness of their day-to-day existence, where Black boys are made to do manual labour and barred from the privileges of their white counterparts.

Shot almost entirely in first person through the eyes of both boys, this bold stylistic choice pulls viewers in from the sidelines and allows them to inhabit the characters, actually experiencing the gut-wrenching feeling of being left alone in the back of a car or awaiting a brutal beating. In concept, such a gamble could have risked looking gimmicky, like an upgraded version of found footage or clunky video game POV, but the gentle camera choreography artfully captures the confusion and beauty of experiencing life in real-time.

It’s a refreshingly intimate depiction of segregation stories from this time, where violent images will often oversaturate our screens to the point of numbness. Yet Nickel Boys engages in a quiet resistance by subverting this expectation. When Elwood’s grandmother is barred from visiting, prompting her to share a hug with Turner in his place, you can practically smell her sweet perfume. In another impactful scene, Elwood darts across the street when he thinks he sees Martin Luther King in the flesh (it’s actually a very lifelike cardboard cutout), a heart-racing moment that feels like it’s really happening to you.

While the narrative never quite makes peace in the way you would expect and does meander slightly off course, it seems Ross had no intention of a textbook crescendo. In a story that tackles abuse, segregation and racial injustice, Nickel Boys, against all the odds, arrives as the most visually beautiful film of the last year.