SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The film "Nickel Boys" tells the story of two teens trying to survive at a racist Florida reform school. It's based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel. But critic Bob Mondello says filmaker RaMell Ross makes the tale his own with an unorthodox arthouse approach.
BOB MONDELLO, HOST:
In most films, you get to know characters...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NICKEL BOYS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Elwood.
MONDELLO: ...By seeing them. In "Nickel Boys," you get to know the main character by seeing what he sees. Filmmaker RaMell Ross' camera gives you not his leading character's face, but his point of view, starting with shots of an orange hanging on a branch seen from underneath.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) C'mon, it's me, El.
MONDELLO: We're in Tallahassee, Florida, and Elwood, the boy lying on the ground looking up, is a smart, curious kid.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) He's out back, looking like he fell out.
MONDELLO: It's 1962, so this is the segregated South where Elwood is expected to step off the sidewalk and into the street if a white person is walking near him. But all around, Elwood sees evidence that the world is changing. Images on TV screens at an electronic store of Martin Luther King Jr. - when Elwood stops to watch, we catch a glimpse of him reflected in the windowpane.
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MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: (As himself) It will not be long because truth crushed to earth will rise again.
MONDELLO: Elwood's world will change as he grows. When he's 16, a teacher tells him about a nearby college that's opened up courses to high-achieving high school students. And Elwood, played by Ethan Herisse, leaps at the opportunity, only to find he's leapt into an abyss. Hitchhiking to school on his first day, he accepts a ride in a flashy turquoise Impala...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NICKEL BOYS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Keep your eyes down.
ETHAN HERISSE: (As Elwood) OK, OK.
MONDELLO: ...Only discovering when it's pulled over that it was stolen.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Don't look back.
HERISSE: (As Elwood) What do you mean?
MONDELLO: Unjustly charged as an accomplice in the theft, he's sent not to college, but to Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school based on Florida's notoriously brutal Dozier School for Boys. At Nickel, Black kids who ask questions always suffer and sometimes disappear.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) You mess up, and we have a place for you, and you will not like it.
MONDELLO: We're about a half hour in at this point, and we still haven't seen Elwood's face, except in reflections - that electronic store windowpane, the curved side of his Nana's stainless steel iron as it glides across her ironing board. We've seen him, in other words, when he sees him. Then at Nickel, he meets a boy named Turner, played by Brandon Wilson, and finally, someone else sees him. And when the filmmaker gives Turner his own point of view, we do, too.
There's a history here of Hollywood not seeing Black characters through their own eyes. With his point-of-view approach, filmmaker Ross isn't doing something no one's done before, but it's been done so seldom in commercial movies that it feels revelatory in "Nickel Boys" to have the camera tell us things in an expressionist way. In the beginning, an optimistic Elwood is always looking up, so the camera is, too. As Turner shows him how to avoid the brutality at Nickel, he and the camera mostly look down. But Elwood's also finding his voice.
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HERISSE: (As Elwood) It's not like the old days. We can stand up for ourselves.
BRANDON WILSON: (As Turner) And it barely works out there. What do you think it's going to do in here?
HERISSE: (As Elwood) You say that 'cause you got no one out there sticking up for you.
MONDELLO: Nana does try to stick up for Elwood, and actress Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor makes the effort heartbreaking.
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AUNJANUE ELLIS-TAYLOR: (As Hattie) I let you down.
HERISSE: (As Elwood) I'm OK, Nana.
ELLIS-TAYLOR: (As Hattie) El, I let you down.
HERISSE: (As Elwood) No. No, I'm OK.
MONDELLO: He's not, and you see that not in his visage, but in hers. There's more to Ross' film than arthouse technique. He's mining history, righting film industry wrongs and asking the audience to work a little. For moviegoers who've been taught to read emotions in onscreen faces - and that's everyone - "Nickel Boys" will feel crazily disoriented. It also proves stunningly effective at letting its audience walk a mile in a character's shoes. I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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