There are several sequences in RaMell Ross’ extraordinary, Louisiana-filmed, “Nickel Boys” where time runs in reverse. Often these moments are interspersed with stock footage or historical images replaying back as if some Georges Méliès magic trick meant to dazzle cinematically. One scene in particular, the best scene in the movie in my opinion, shows a marathon from the 1980’s being run, seen in a bar by one of our main characters, Elwood Curtis (Daveed Diggs), the grown survivor of an abusive reform school called Nickel Academy. He watches footage of the marathon running in regular motion, thousands of legs and bodies pumping in near unison, like birds on migration. He is disturbed, however, when a fellow “student” from Nickel recognizes him, a ghost from another life. The two exchange pleasantries, each surprised the other made it out alive. They buy each other a drink and toast the tragedy that both ruined and made them. But soon a friendly drink devolves into horrific recollections, memories of torture and death and despair; the kind of shared experience only known to those who have suffered beneath the boot heel of history. In response, Elwood suddenly begins to see the marathon runners reversing course. Their progress running backward, as if time itself were re-folding; careening away from the relative tranquility of the now and unfolding horrifically toward the apocalyptic monstrosity of a past narrowly escaped. The effect was jarring and lingered as I watched the film, a masterpiece of form, tone, empathy, and horror. As the credits rolled, one question plagued the back of my mind and has stuck with me to this day; what does it feel like to see progress reversed?
“Nickel Boys,” adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from Colson Whitehead, is a collection of progressing tragedies. We follow a young African American child named Elwood (Ethan Herisse) as he grows up in the shadow of the Jim Crow South, Tallahassee specifically. From the opening frames of the film, it is clear that Writer/Director Ross is doing more than mere adaptation as the camera takes on the form of a first-person POV, placing the audience behind the eyes of young Elwood. This perspective continues as we see the wide world through a child’s eyes, specifically a young Black child’s eyes, in all its wonder and terror. We see a child’s view from below a card table while adults drink and laugh together and from the base of a Christmas tree as his grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) hangs tinsel. Soon, Ross shows us a frame that gives us our first look at Elwood, in the reflection of a storefront window while TVs behind the glass show a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. This image, of a young boy, reflected back against a dozen depictions of King speaking to the world, and more specifically to him, left me entranced. Minutes later, there was another such image, of a group of shirtless young Black men standing against a street corner wall while an old white man pressed his cane against their bellies as hard as he could and white police officers looked on, drinking their glass-bottled cokes. It was HERE that I knew this film was something special, not just a depiction of atrocities committed against innocents but a radical approach to filmmaking that I had never seen before. A revolutionary use of perspective in a world where empathy is lost.
Elwood is bright, and is offered free tuition at an up-and-coming HBCU as a seventeen-year-old. Hitching his way north, he has the unfortunate distinction of being picked up by a man in a stolen car, and the police swoop in, naturally unable to believe that a young black kid could be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead of jail, Curtis is sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school where the old rules of the racial hierarchy are vigorously, and violently enforced; where the white kids get a fancy house with large white columns and the Black/mixed-race kids are stuck in a crumbling dorm. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the bastardization of the 13th Amendment and the Prison Industrial Complex will understand that the systems of racial oppression in this country do not change, they merely put on a new face. If we do not, Ross makes his point abundantly clear. We watch through Elwood’s eyes as the promise of a life laid out before him, one of education and progress, has been reversed back to one not unlike his ancestors who toiled in the fields while the whites watched in leisure. A shot of Elwood driving into Nickel Academy, seeing the relative opulence of the white facilities in contrast to his own, reminded me of a similar shot from Steve McQueen’s “Widows,” the only filmmaker whose eye for impactful images I might compare to Ross’. The line between upward mobility and crippling degradation is a thin one, drawn across time in blood. Nickel Academy is not a place for reform, it is a place for extermination. As Elwood’s friend Turner (Brandon Wilson) opines after Elwood is brutally tortured by the camp’s superintendent (Hamish Linklater), “Nickel is just like the outside world. It’s just that in here, nobody has to pretend.”
The story of the Nickel Academy is based upon the real-life story of Dozier School for Boys, a reform school in Florida that was opened in 1900 and only closed in 2011, where 55 unmarked graves of “students” were found, three times as many Black as White. That the horrors portrayed in “Nickel Boys” are true should come as no surprise to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear; yet we often, if not always, look away from atrocities of this nature. It’s easier. We all know it. What Ross is able to do, through the awesome power of cinema, is take away that choice. Through the eyes of Elwood, and later Turner as well, Ross does not allow the audience the chance to turn a blind eye, to look away, or avert their delicate sensibilities to the horror. For the “students” of Nickel, there is no escape, so there is none for us either. Ross forces us to not just bear witness but to be victims, for the subjugators to become the subjugated. This, I am sure for many in the audience, might be jarring and upsetting. Good. I cannot think of a finer use of the form, nor a more righteous calling, than the work this film performs. It is a gift to the world, a light we should feed until it is blinding and inextinguishable.
There are several images throughout the film that claw at my insides: hundreds of abandoned shoes stacked against lockers, showers with young Black men struggling for a splash of frigid water, that of an older Elwood, hunched and broken, as if ever carrying the terrible weight of history perpetuated unjustly. Yet, through it all, the image I cannot keep from returning to is of those runners in reverse, facing a race they will never complete, being drug back to the starting line again and again against their will. As a new year dawns, with horrific consequences, I know I am not alone in sensing the tide of justice beginning to run backward. “Nickel Boys” is a blunt force reminder that the world some long to return to left innocent bodies in its wake, lives ravaged and mangled in the name of progress. Ross has gifted us a window through the eyes of those left in the ground while the world reforms around and above it. What does it feel like to see progress reversed? I believe we are living through the answer to that question. If that means you leave the movie crying, good. If that means you leave the movie angry, better. If that means you leave the movie feeling lost, know that you’re not alone.
“Nickel Boys” is the most profoundly upsetting and affecting film of the year. See it, bear witness, and support the fine work of your Louisiana filmmaking friends while you’re at it.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Nickel Boys” opens Jan. 17 in New Orleans theaters.
