RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” expanded its release to San Antonio on Jan. 23. The two-time Academy Award nominated film, based on Colson Whitehead’s novel of the same name, follows the friendship of Ethan Herisse’s Elwood and Brandon Wilson’s Turner — two Black teenagers — as they endure an abusive Florida reform school in the midst of the civil rights movement.
Ross frames the film as a ghost story by shooting in a first-person perspective. The viewpoint coupled with the 4:3 aspect ratio creates a sense of entrapment for the two protagonists as well as the audience. Emphasis is on the camera throughout the film. It pans constantly, often revealing details in close-ups or extreme close-ups.
Viewers experience the non-linear narrative through the eyes of Turner and Elwood across three distinct timelines: their time at Nickel Academy, 1988 and the early 2000s. The camera hovers throughout the academy, portraying the boys as phantoms while demonstrating the haunting effect of trauma. The narratives set post-Nickel Academy employ a third-person shooting style, as the camera attaches itself to the back of the protagonists, as if the lens is a shadow. Instead of being Turner and Elwood, the lens simply follows them like a phantom.
The ghost-like nature of the film becomes heightened in Ross’s use of diegetic sound, staying within the theater for much longer than the frame it existed in. Ross often uses diegetic sounds to create an atmosphere of comfort. The audience finally feels the sense they know where the film is going based on the screeching record of echoes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and suddenly an apparition of an alligator enters the frame — a motif from Jim Crow footage spliced throughout the film.
Throughout the film, the narrative is spliced with varied shots of archival footage and photos of Black communities during the Civil Rights era. The editing disorients the audience enough to create empathy for Elwood and Turner as their lives become uprooted and discombobulated. The found footage adds to the core theme of the film: Creating an official record is vital to developing a collective culture; without one, the individual becomes erased.
Ross’ adaptation of “Nickel Boys” remains a relentlessly heart-wrenching watch through and through. The movie’s cinematography combined with its brilliant sound design demands it be watched on a big screen, while its subject matter necessitates viewing with the community of a theater screen.