Just read the book. Seriously. Colson Whitehead writes such wonderful books. Read them. Read them all. How do you adapt books that are complete masterpieces unto themselves? Barry Jenkins understood the assignment. Director RaMell Ross undoubtably did too, applying the same love poem to Black America as he did with Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018). That was a wonderful documentary, impressionistic and emotive, tackling head-on the social construct and consequences of race in the American South. RaMell Ross again turns his lens on the Historic South, this time dissecting the systemic issues of a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
Once you’ve read the book, maybe do watch the movie, too, because RaMell Ross has a bold vision. Like with Hale County, Nickel Boys begins as an extraordinary tone poem, establishing a vivid sense of place. The way it frames Cultural Blackness is fascinating and as a short film, the beginning is a stunning Terrence Malick-like reflection of life. It’s so inwardly searching and the shots are so lovely. The film is shot by Jomo Fray but its most pictorial moments sing from the merits of Ross’ exceptional style of photography.
Then a movie has to happen. That’s where it gets hard. That’s where you just want to read the book. Either way, if you see it, or don’t, you’ll need to just go read the book. It’s a great book. And the approach here is… innovative.
To capture the true interiority of the novel, so much of the film is framed in the first person. This means most character dialogue is acted at the camera. It is not quite unnerving although several times it breaks the cinematic spell, but it does feel in direct opposition to the formal control of the poetry that comes before it. Or, perhaps, it is a sustained metaphor about the institutionalization of the characters that wagers we can only feel what they feel through this perspective.
Nickel Boys is a story about identity. Ironically, wherein even from the novel’s third person perspective, it makes it easier to identity with a character, in a movie, it feels like an added layer of obfuscation. We do not get to see the most feeling moments of the characters except from another character’s point-of-view, and then, it flattens the exchanges, because we do not get on-screen chemistry between the actors, but instead, a very staged, nearly videogamey feeling, where the actors are acting at us. It’s one thing to direct an audience, and there are some occasionally rousing successes in that way, but it’s another to perform the movie at the audience, rendering it more play-like while also by form and function, pushing more toward realism.
Over a couple hours, this gets in the way. Eventually, the formal point-of-view structure belies the narrative. Where the forced-perspective was initially impressionistic and emotive in Hale County, it’s now limited by another framing device with a character the audience absolutely needs to empathize with and relate to. You really need more of their face to do that. The several shots where the camera must pull out and we’re just behind their heads, just leave us wanting side-by-side conversations, more authentic dialogue wherein the recording feels like it’s entirely done in the same room and take together, where it’s more call-and-response and less being talked to.
It’s a precarious balance because on the scale of showing vs telling, Nickel Boys goes heavily in the direction of showing. It is not too expository. The bones of a perfect adaptation are here. The perspective does sometimes show us really unique moments, some things we haven’t seen in movies before, but more often, it’s torturous in what it doesn’t show us, which is an irony in its presentation.
That Ethan Herisee is memorable as Elwood and Brandon Wilson is good as Turner is just a testament to the actors and how they’ve been directed. There are several beautiful character moments that come with the story, which is so much about internal growth and beliefs about corrective justice, but also about who we are and whether that can be molded or is hard-wired into us. And the actors convey all that, with Elwood and Turner requiring very different outcomes in the story, and pulling that off, culminating in some very poetic shots that match the gravity of the opening frames.
Nickel Boys is a movie with gorgeous ideas. It’s thoughtful and is resilient in its chosen format. Eventually, that may come to feel like a gimmick. Perhaps first-person is an action perspective. In a drama, it sometimes feels like it cannot contain everything that needs to be on the screen. Often the film is limited by its stylistic choice. Not as often — but often enough — it’s distinctly beautiful. There are just enough reasons everyone needs to see it but it’s also created another compelling reason to read the fantastic book instead. The aesthetics here just don’t serve the truly important story it’s trying to tell. So read it. And watch it later. Maybe that’s not such a bad outcome. Go read one of the great modern American novels and watch the aspirational and innovative movie about it later. It’s better to try something and partly succeed than to do a bad job. Nobody did a bad job here. The choices made just don’t ultimately work.