I just caught up with Nickel Boys, an important film from two years ago which tackles a very serious subject and attempts to convey its story in a more vibrant, unusual way.  I appreciate when filmmakers work hard to create something unique, although in this case the technique used is gimmicky and distracting.  I would much rather the story would have been told “straight,” which means more linearly and without all the camera trickery.

RaMell Ross’ adaptation of the Colson Whitehead book follows the unfortunate life path of Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), a studious young man who finds himself in trouble through no fault of his own and sent to the Nickel Academy reform school in the early 1960s.  There, he befriends Turner (Brandon Wilson), a streetwise guy who tries to keep altruistic Elwood from making his situation worse.  They witness (and suffer) beatings and worse before finally escaping; years later one of them is pushed to action by a belated governmental investigation of the Academy and its horrific practices.

Ross juxtaposes the barbaric and disturbingly out-of-date racial strife with the then-current civil rights movement, the technical achievement of orbiting the Moon and even the movie The Defiant Ones, in order to prove that the world was making solid social progress in politics, science and the arts — and yet in this little corner of Florida time was standing still and young black men were suffering and dying needlessly at the hands of monstrous white folks.  It is, sadly, an old story, but one which is no less powerful for being told over and over again, much like the Holocaust.  In order to modernize that story and make it more visually arresting, Ross has chosen to film it in first person perspective, a singular style used in Lady in the Lake (1946) and Hardcore Henry (2015) wherein the camera becomes the character, with only the character’s voice present to move the action forward.

Some feel that this technique provides the character (in this case characters, because the perspective switches from Elwood to Turner about halfway through, and then switches between them at various times) with a visual eloquence because we see things as he sees them.  There are certainly times when this technique is not just effective but powerful.  But my take is that much of the time it is illusory.  It is never a true representation of what Elwood or Turner sees because the film’s camera is much too narrow, and some things are out-of-focus; our eyes see differently than a focused camera lens and trying to reproduce human eyesight in such a way is incomplete.  It seems gimmicky because it is gimmicky.  It was gimmicky in 1946 and 2015 and it is in this movie.  Additionally, since we cannot see who is talking most of the time we lose connection with the speaking character.  It is no surprise that the best performance belongs to Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Nanna because we see her and experience her as a normal character, not somebody who is invisible most of the time.  It is my contention that in this case, the technique used drowns the intent and effectiveness of the drama with its own distractiveness, despite its sincere attempt at creativity.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  9 September 2026.