Nickel Boys

Despite all the issues I ended up having with it, I do admired Nickel Boys for delivering a unique experience that doesn't feel like something I've seen in any other movie. It's a very stylistic movie that attempts to tell an important story in an interesting way but unfortunately the story telling method didn't work for me overall. I very much not a fan of POV shots in movies since I find them so distracting and unnatural so filming an entire movie in that way was something I found to be extremely frustrating. It just kept me at a distance from these characters since I'm not seeing how they react during pivotal scenes. Instead of trying to get immersed in the experience I found myself more focused on the camera work in all the wrong ways. It's a very harrowing tale and one that understands the things we don't see on screen are all the more impactful. With it being such a disturbing story a vision that I could've actually gotten on board with would've done so much to get me wrapped up in this experience. But as it is I just found it to be a bit of a miserable watch that dragged unbelievably for me. I do admire the risks that this movie takes and more than that I see what RaMell Ross was going for. It's beautifully acted and did make me feel some genuine emotions while watching it but the main thing I felt when all is said and done is frustration.

I respect this film much more than I enjoyed it. While the director really took a big swing here, this film is a tad overrated. I think that's for two reasons: the way in which this is shot, and the subject matter. While both certainly have merit, simply because a film is doing something innovative, doesn't necessarily mean the film itself is very good. While the film certainly is a real technical achievement, and the subject is touching, I wonder if shooting it in a traditional manner would've made this more palatable and improved the film overall.

If you go into this film without knowing what it's about, you'd never know it's based on a true story. There are scenes, particularly in the beginning, that don't really add up to much ultimately. For a film about such bleak subject matter, the film feels very dreamlike, fantastical, and over-stylized. Because of this, the film almost feels like a projection or rosy retrospection of the abusuve reform school, in lieu of a realistic portrayal of what that must have been like for the victims. Off of that point, it felt like the director was unsure what he wanted the film to be about: the horrors of the reform school or the power of friendship between the two central boys. Much of the abuse is implied or heard off-screen, so how trying and scary the environment must have been for the boys is never really fleshed out, it's mostly implicit. And while the friendship between the boys is shown, how they went from being bunkmates to being best friends isn't necessarily limned or shown for viewers. The story is quite jumpy, at times includes arbitrary scenes, and thus the plot can feel confusing.

How nice the film looked took away from how impactful it could've actually been. The cinematography is certainly beautiful to look at, but the use of the first-person shots were unnecessary and don't really add much to the story. There are many scenes of characters talking to one another and because the film is in first-person POV, you have the actors talking straight into the camera; it more often than not feels awkward, stilted, and contrived, almost reminiscent of a video game or hologram. It just felt bizarre much of the time.

This easily could've been told in a traditional, third-person way and the film would've been much better than it is. The first-person gimmick also sullies the experience of understanding just how bad things are for the characters because we literally only see two perspectives, not an objective view or the totality of the mistreatment. And the pacing much of the time is unfortunately mediocre. A good half hour could've been trimmed from this film.

The performances are good though, and really carry the film. Aujanue Ellis-Taylor gives a great performance, portraying a grandmother trying to come to grips with a deeply unsettling situation she finds her grandson in. The acting of the two leads is also quite good.

Overall, it's beautiful to look at with some strong acting, and I appreciate the big swing that was taken here by the director, but the story could've been told and edited better than it was.

This is by no means a bad film, but it is a frustrating one. Sure, we all appreciate a movie that tries to do something different-but let's not confuse "different" with "successful."

The film is shot in a POV style where the camera is meant to represent the character's perspective, which ends up being wildly distracting. Not only does this approach pull you out of the action, but there are moments where you're left wondering what the hell you're even looking at. For example, there are several shots of the back of someone's head. Who is seeing that? Are we supposed to believe the character can see the back of their own skull?

I shouldn't have to ask questions like that. And I wouldn't, if the film had drawn me in. But the overly gimmicky style makes that impossible. This could have been a very powerful movie-the subject matter certainly deserves it. However, the overly clever filmmaking drains it of any real impact.

The acting and writing just barely manage to save it from being a complete disaster, but you still leave the theater wanting so much more.

The story this movie tells is fantastic and heart wrenching. The acting is superb. At times the director makes brilliant choices. Ok done with the good stuff.

What a train wreck. Seriously. I think this director has a great future, but he threw everything into this film but the kitchen sink. I hated the hand held shaky cam stuff. Why did he do that? It tended to be more shaky early in the film so it kind of set me off early and the story and acting had to win me back. The way POV was utilized throughout was very distracting. We are seeing everything unfold through the character on the screens eyes. At times it is really confusing. The camera is the character. No normal film type interactions at all. Sure if works from time to time, but overall it is annoying. The set up to when Elwood gets in trouble is very long and not well constructed. I have not read the novel but I would guess it has a section about the (limited?) legal process that occurs. It would have been a nice touch. Loved some of the odd montages. Hated others. I still gave it a 7., for the gripping story this film tells, but man ,what a weird film.

"Nickel Boys" is a strikingly assured and ambitious debut fiction-feature from director RaMell Ross. It is composed almost entirely of POV shots. This has been tried a hand-full of times before in film history, perhaps most famously in the '40s noir, "The Lady of the Lake", but never as intricately and effectively as it is here.

"Nickel Boys" is bi-perspectival. We experience the gazes of two different characters, Elwood and Turner, teenagers incarcerated in a Jim Crowe-era juvenile detention center that amounts to a borderline death-camp for its Black prisoners. I was struck by the similarities and differences between "Nickel Boys" and "Hunger", another overpowering work on life-in-detention. The older film is about the body to a visceral degree that few other movies have attempted and the result is a work of relentless objectivity. "Nickel Boys", by contrast, is about the effects of trauma and imprisonment on the mind and memory- a relentlessly subjective piece.

The tone is thus very different from that of most bleak prison dramas, at times almost affirmational. We're experiencing, literally seeing, the way Elwood and Turner view their conditions in ways that make their situation tolerable- largely by focusing on their friendship- each other's faces- and those of their loved ones. This is not to say that the film is artificially pleasant. One of the best scenes consists of a single long take of a conversation in a bar years after the events depicted in most of the film have taken place. It's a remarkably well staged and performed scene featuring brief but memorable work by actor Sam Malone as Percy, one of the detention center's survivors, uttering the horrors he witnessed in a tone that suggests that even years later he can barely cope with what he saw. Experiences like those inflicted on the characters perhaps cause more damage after the fact than during the actual experience when survival instinct takes over.

The bi-perspectival construction of the film also demonstrates the ways that experiences and memories are never fully constructed or belonging to any one individual. Elwood and Turner, for all of their differences, come to seem almost like one character. We start to forget, or care, about whose perspective we are viewing. These men are forging this part of their lives together- they are co-authors of each other's experience. In this sense, "Nickel Boys" is about themes larger than imprisonment and injustice. It's about the ways that time and memory enact experience, both making it palatable but in the process leaving defining scars. The film's final montage features images of cellular reality- our being recreating itself through creation and destruction even within a single lifetime.

"Nickel Boys" is not a perfect movie. Ross's previous work had been as a documentarian and the script he co-wrote with Joslyn Barnes and Colson Whitehead is characterized by some clunky, overly on-the-nose dialog. However, this makes the powerful performance of said dialog by stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, and especially Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Elwood's grandmother, all the more impressive.