‘Nickel Boys’: RaMell Ross Transforms Colson Whitehead’s Acclaimed Novel Into a Searing Human Chronicle of Survival

Alci Rengifo

Nations can have so many skeletons in the closet of history that only art can illuminate their bones. “Nickel Boys” could have easily sensationalized its material, which looks into the harsh, racist reform school system that was common in the Jim Crow South. Its impact is greater by setting a mood as opposed to just laying down facts. Director RaMell Ross adapts the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead as something beyond a mere translation of text to screen. Originally a documentary filmmaker, Ross combines intimate realism with a dreamlike flow. As a result, this movie feels like it is cutting between memory and subconscious. 

The narrative is told from the point of view of two young Black Americans in 1960s Tallahassee, Florida, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is an idealistic high schooler whose enthusiasm is fueled by the Civil Rights movement. He lives with his grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), an equally bright spirit. When his teacher Mr. Hill (Jimmy Fails), a former Freedom Rider, tells Elwood of a local technical college allowing high schoolers to enroll, the eager student jumps at the chance. A fateful choice occurs when Elwood hitches a ride with a stranger who turns out to have stolen the car. The police arrest Elwood as an accomplice and send him off to Nickel Academy. The reformatory school clearly has a crushing atmosphere and. Elwood soon makes friends with Turner (Brandon Wilson), both now facing the racists who run the institution.

“The process of adaptation was going straight to Colson’s source materials,” Ross told Entertainment Voice. “I wanted to honor the original source, the children who lived through this at Florida’s Dozier School for Boys, and the mythology that Colson built and that’s how the form of the film developed organically.” Whitehead had previously garnered much acclaim for his novel “The Underground Railroad,” which was turned into a searing Amazon series by Berry Jenkins. Ross’ work as a documentarian like “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” invites the viewer to inhabit the shoes of his subjects. With cinema, he can carry out that effect fully. “Nickel Boys” has an appropriately disorienting feel. Cinematographer Jomo Fray creates the illusion that we are looking at events literally through the eyes of the protagonists, switching from Elwood to Turner. This can make the claustrophobia of their entrapment feel immediate.

The real story of the Dozier School for Boys is indeed horrifying. In 2012 the facts came out about 100 years of abuse, rape, torture and even murder by its staff. While there were white students at the school, the victims were predominantly Black. Whitehead’s fictionalized take feels too close to reality to even be labeled a novelization. Ross creates a montage effect for the movie where moments are intercut with real photos from the school, as well as shots of items found in unmarked graves later discovered by investigators. Extreme violence is kept offscreen. Ross will build unbearable tension in moments where the boys are taken late at night to some dingy room to be punished for talking back or getting rebellious. We see the faces of their torturers, who are mostly school officials with hatred in their eyes, drunk on power. Gossip floats of someone who disappeared. While doing manual work, Elwood will spot a student being led away ominously. There’s a “hot house” in the building where disorderly students are thrown in to suffer brutal temperatures. Those running the school, like the dreaded Spencer (Hamish Linklater), make no excuses for their violence. This is just the way things are within a racist social order. The movie lacks a central villain because the entire enterprise is monstrous.

Much time is spent with Elwood and Turner as they process their situation in hushed or open exchanges. Elwood is more reserved but fierce, finding ways to prepare to fight back such as keeping a log of all the unpaid work they’re forced to do in the school grounds. Turner is more cynical and prefers to watch out for their safety. Outside, Hattie gets a lawyer and visits Elwood at the school, sometimes being kept cruelly away by the guards. There’s little artificial heroism in “Nickel Boys.” It is a story of pure survival and emotional endurance. The screenplay by Joslyn Barnes functions as a blueprint for Ross, who evokes more through imagery that recalls Terrence Malick in its floating, ethereal quality. The rush of running through a backyard on a summer day interacts with the somberness of the reform school. Stock footage then interrupts, reminding us that beyond the perimeter events like the moon landing and antiwar protests are taking place.

Like last year’s “The Zone of Interest,” which is a different kind of film but similar in its spirit of being a witness, “Nickel Boys” reminds us that systems of oppression operate in a disturbing mixture of violence and banality. Ross wants to express the experience of these two young men as opposed to sermonizing. Before any kind of resolution takes place, the narrative jumps ahead decades to give us glimpses of an older Elwood (Daveed Diggs) dealing with his traumas. He scours the internet for information on what has been discovered about the school. At a bar he comes across a former fellow inmate who clearly never recovered psychologically from the experience. Elwood is clearly uncomfortable, but he also navigates socially around people who will never really know what he went through. 

As with so much tragic history, records of what happened and works of art like “Nickel Boys” may be the only justice the victims will ever receive. The film leads up to a hopeful moment that results in another heartbreaking twist. As Edward Said once reflected, in the real world displaced peoples are rarely ever put back in their rightful place on earth. “Nickel Boys” is already arriving with acclaim, including a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture, Drama. It is well- deserved, because you walk out of the theaters with the characters feeling more familiar than anything purely invented. “It took a while for me to understand it,” said Ross about confronting the implications of the story, “I basically lived two other lives. I basically postponed two years of what would be my traditional life. I think after all this awards run is over, I’ll have time to reflect on the inner relationship going on here.”

“Nickel Boys” releases Dec. 13 in select theaters.