By Elise Mackanych | Additional reporting by Kirsten Coachman
In “Nickel Boys,” the narrative feature debut from RaMell Ross (Oscar-nominated “Hale County This Morning, This Evening”), the filmmaker delivers a gut-wrenching film adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Nickel Boys,” which is based on true accounts of the grossly abusive Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.
Written by Ross and Joslyn Barnes (“Memoria”), the film, set in 1960s Florida, centers on the friendship between two Black teenage boys with differing worldviews: Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse, “When They See Us”) and Turner (Brandon Wilson, “The Way Back”). The two meet while serving time at Nickel Academy—a segregated reformatory school—in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement.
The film also stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (“King Richard”), Hamish Linklater (“The Big Short”), Fred Hechinger (“Thelma”), and Daveed Diggs (“Hamilton”).
Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray’s (“All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”) effective use of first-person camerawork lets the audience take in on the horrors that take place at Nickel Academy through the eyes of Elwood and Turner. The camerawork adds layers of emotions to the heavy story, especially as the boys reckon with the injustices forced upon them.
“Nickel Boys” serves as a reminder that the reality of America’s history of deep-seated inequality is not as distant as it may seem, as remnants are still embedded in political, societal, and systemic practices.
The film has already garnered a number of nominations this awards season, including Best Picture at the upcoming Golden Globes Awards, Critics Choice Awards, and Film Independent Spirit Awards. This past December, Ross won Best Director at the Gotham Awards. Wilson was also recognized at the Gothams with an award for Breakthrough Performer.
Art U News recently had the opportunity to speak with Ross over Zoom about the making of “Nickel Boys” and adapting Whitehead’s novel for the screen, the filmmaker’s appreciation of “plurality of analysis,” and his advice for aspiring directors.
[Editor’s note: The Q+A discusses specific plot points in the film.]
What made you decide to choose this book and the story to bring to the screen?
I was super fortunate to be asked to adapt, and I was very hesitant because it takes a lot for me to make a film, and maybe that’s everyone, but it doesn’t seem like it. There’s people making a lot of stuff out there. But after reading it, it seemed like I could offer Colson’s narrative as it would be visualized. I feel like it aligned with my art practice and the stuff I’m interested in, which is that the way that those boys are treated—the Dozier boys—and “Nickel Boys” is dependent on the way in which they’ve been visualized over time in history. It’s dependent on the way in which they’re seen. And, yeah, that’s kind of my love.
You’ve previously mentioned an appreciation for Southern photography, specifically the archives of the Dozier boys from the Florida Memory Project. How did you decide what parts of the story to include in those flashbacks?
We wanted to bring life to the Dozier School boys and save them; I like to say rescue them from the archive. Their images exist in the Florida Memory Project, which is great. It’s a really amazing resource and a consolidation of images. Also, the Dozier report itself is a 150-something-page document that’s like a forensic analysis of the findings at the Dozier School grounds. But there’s something about the power dynamics of those images and the timing history in which the people were captured, and their lack of agency overall, that to me, renders a lot of the images in the archive across the globe as just being super fraught and reductive, and so how do you rescue them then? How do you give them a new context? We thought elevating them to “Nickel Boys” was exactly that gesture.
The film is set during the Civil Rights Movement, yet its themes of justice and equity resonate still today. How did you want the film to connect the past and present issues and make a statement today?
I think the way that the film is dealing with the archive, the way that it’s approaching the storytelling, which is through the point of view of the characters, the way in which the form of the film kind of becomes almost a mirror to the forms of films and a mirror to knowledge production as it relates to ideas of blackness, I think sort of is the grand statement. And is the language of resistance and is the language of acknowledgment.
At times, it seemed like moments of the film were left for viewers to infer. For example, what happens to Elwood’s journal? Or what happens to Griffin after winning the boxing match? How did you decide what aspects of the plot to unfold onscreen and which to leave open to the audience?
In making a film like this, I’m just so interested in the plurality of analysis, you know, that it’s very difficult. I mean, it’s impossible to really know anything—let alone why things happen. It’s difficult to have concrete reasons as to why, and so I think we wanted to guide the viewer alongside Joslyn Barnes (co-screenwriter and producer) and myself. [We] wanted to guide them and stay true to Colson’s narrative but also open it up for the more cynical to read it as more cynical, and for the more optimistic to read it as more optimistic and everything in between.
Throughout the film, there are a lot of shots of strings shown. Can you explain a little about the meaning behind them?
Most of the images come from my childhood or general imagination. The thing about the film is that meaning is there for you if you want it, just like life. You know, some people are a little bit more perceptive than others. Some notice that, “Damn, that was x, y and z.” And then sometimes you’re like, “Sure, that’s one interpretation of it, but it seems like you really wanted to see that, you know, doesn’t seem like that’s the only thing it is.” That’s kind of how we’re trying to build the film to be an interface for your subjectivity, so I’m unsure what it means, but I’m sure you have a hint or not.
Do you have any advice for students interested in directing? From a director’s standpoint, what should students focus on if they would like to be where you are one day?
Well, that’s a good question, because I don’t have any answers. I just have a little bit of life experience, and through that life experience, I believe that everyone should develop a photographic sensibility. Young directors should not outsource their visions but employ their DPs to collaborate and push forward a very idiosyncratic way that they’d like to tell the story. And I think making the film’s aesthetics as personal as possible, then you’re doing something that’s hard to express with the medium, which is what the medium does the best. You know, the inexpressible, the same stuff that life is made out of.
“Nickel Boys” opens in the Bay Area on January 3.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.