Nickel Boys, Rameel Ross'big screen interpretation of Colson WhiteheadThe Pulitzer Prize Winning Book The Nickel Boyshad its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival’s Herzog Theatre on Friday night. Reaction among attendees, including several Academy members, was sharply divided: many were impressed and deeply moved by the film, while others were indifferent, leaving its Oscar prospects somewhat uncertain.
Ross is an extraordinarily gifted filmmaker, Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award-winning for his unconventional 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, Tonightthat examined the black experience in a part of Alabama. Now just 42, he is making his narrative directorial debut with Nickel Boyswhose screenplay was written together with his Hale County producer Author: Joslyn Barnes.
The story centers on two young black men, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Mr. Brandon Wilson), who, in the 1960s, as the civil rights struggle rages across much of America, end up together at Nickel Academy. This Florida reform school (based on a real institution) treats its young students, especially the non-white ones, barbarously, like prisoners and slaves, going to great lengths to dehumanize them and in some cases even killing them. Turner has been there before, returned to the world, and then been sent back; but Elwood, as punishment for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, is a newbie. When they meet, they are both affected by each other's different perspectives, and the film's perspective itself changes.
Nickel Boys it's visually beautiful, but very avant-gardenot unlike the movies of Terrence Malick —that critics have devoured for decades, but audiences have largely avoided, and the Academy has only occasionally and to a limited extent embraced. It will be interesting to see how Oscar voters respond to Ross’s film.
Cinematographers might well embrace Jomo Fray's shot — skillfully lingers on various objects, moves in and out of focus, and, most surprisingly, shoots from the point of view of a disembodied protagonist (as was done in 1947 The Lady in the Lake). Others, however, remain indifferent because they are deprived of the possibility of seeing, with their own faces, how a protagonist reacts to the events that happen around him.
Publishers can applaud the way the film editor Nicolas Monsour inserts footage montages of assorted things into the larger story. But for others, the relevance of that footage to the larger story isn’t always clear, and it makes a film that’s quite long (two hours and 20 minutes) and demanding (it’s relentlessly, heartbreakingly sad) feel even longer.
Finally, while the young male actors get the majority of the screen time and do a fine job, the performance voters might respond to the most is that of the always wonderful Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (When they see us, King Richard AND Origin), who makes the most of every moment as Elwood's grandmother, particularly in the scene where she tries to visit Elwood in Nickel.
Nickel Boyswhose producers include Plan B Dede Gardner AND by Jeremy Kleiner (Moonlight), will open the New York Film Festival on September 27, have a limited theatrical release on October 25, and will then be available for streaming on Amazon.