“Nickel Boys” is a harrowing rumination on optimism versus cynicism

When it came time to write the follow-up to his 2016 novel “The Underground Railroad,” a magical alternate history take on the Antebellum South, Colson Whitehead initially wanted to write something lighter. He hesitated to dive back into a project that required reckoning with the heaviness of Black American history. But this was the beginning of the first Trump administration. Reality compelled him to take his fiction in that other direction, birthing 2019’s “Nickel Boys,” a fictional exploration of the systemic abuse Black boys endured at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a reform school in Marianna, Florida.

Bringing to life the novel’s central conceit: that there was an intricate system of trains and conductors ferrying runaway slaves through the countryside, Barry Jenkins’ miniseries adaptation of “The Underground Railroad” was the perhaps most unsung piece of Black media of the post-Floyd era. This time around, Director RaMell Ross, a Peabody award-winning documentarian, made the pivot to scripted features to turn Whitehead’s “Nickel Boys” into the first capital G-great film of the post-DEI era.

“Nickel Boys” is a difficult drama that splits its setting between two periods. Much of the narrative takes place in the 1960s, following a teenager named Elwood (Ethan Herisse) as he attends the Nickel Academy, a fictional stand-in for the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. It intercuts with time jumps to the 2010s, where an adult Elwood learns that a mass grave was discovered on the school’s grounds.

While at first glance, it might seem that “Nickel Boys” joins a long list of productions exploiting Black pain for awards season plaudits, director Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray’s execution of the film’s storytelling proves otherwise. Throughout the first hour or so, the camera is positioned so that viewers can experience the film from Elwood’s point of view. Early on, the visuals are abstract and poetic, like a child’s interpretation of the grownup world around him. But as Elwood reaches high school age, we see that he’s perceived as a grown man by white adults.Through this stylistic conceit, we realize it’s us that they’re looking at.

Elwood is radicalized and inspired by the nascent civil rights movement, wanting to be more involved, but his grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) cautions him to be careful about making himself a target. There’s a haunting scene where Elwood talks to her about his ambitions, and while she steers their conversation in a pragmatic direction, a pamphlet for the Melvin Griggs Technical School slowly slides down the refrigerator door, the magnet securing it too weak to uphold its weight. It’s his plan to attend this school that ultimately dooms Elwood. “Imagine a textbook with nothing to cross out,” Elwood’s mentor, Mr. Hill (Jimmie Fails), pitches, not long after handing him a Sharpie to cross slurs and profane graffiti out of a school textbook. A previous owner has used its frayed corners to sketch a dark flipbook depicting a lynching.

On his first day of classes, Elwood accepts a ride to school from a stranger, not knowing that the vehicle they’re both in has been stolen. An accessory to the crime, his only recourse for staying out of prison is to attend Nickel Academy, a lesser fate his grandmother celebrates by offering him a final slice of angel food cake before he unwittingly descends into Hell. He is driven to the school grounds with a pair of white delinquents, who are dropped off at a large, palatial house. The driver then heads down a gravel road to a glorified hut, where Elwood is to spend an indeterminate amount of time obeying his way into a freedom that does not exist.

Here, he meets his only friend, Turner (Brandon Wilson), and the film’s use of perspective truly comes alive. Through Turner’s eyes, we get to see Elwood in full for the first time. Before, we had only seen glimpses of him on reflective surfaces, like his grandmother’s iron. The two young men are a dichotomy in every way. Elwood is darker-skinned, naive, optimistic, and, through all the pain he will endure at this establishment, determined to be better for himself and for his peers. Turner, who has lighter skin, is relentlessly cynical after enduring his first stint at Nickel. He’s made peace with the horrors of this reality and is trying to navigate his place within it.

Despite the boys’ differences, one of the film’s few comforts comes in their camaraderie. The film takes on a conspiratorial tone as the camera plays with their dueling perspectives. Elwood and Turner can always find each other’s gaze. It’s as if they’re in an awkward office meeting, their eyes darting across the room to meet those of their one other Black co-worker. While critical, those brief moments of brotherhood do little to combat the sense of dread that “life” at Nickel brings.

Nickel Students are essentially prison laborers. There’s a scene early on where Elwood watches as white students play football during recess, before being reminded that this luxury is not offered to Black students at Nickel. The film accentuates this point via a Mexican student who boomerangs between the school’s Black and white campuses because staff can’t figure out where he belongs. While the film never thoroughly plumbs the depths of what these boys endure, choosing instead to suggest and imply, the way Ross’ camera embodies their visions makes it feel like a found footage horror film for Jim Crow. At one point, we witness a profound instance of violence and abuse from Spencer (Hamish Linklater), the school’s corrupt administrator. The moments leading up to his unique brand of punishment—while waiting for the blows to thud—were harrowing.

But the depths aren’t what matters most. It’s the chasm between how low these boys are brought and how high they could have flown in a better, more just world. There’s a brief scene, before Elwood ends up at Nickel, where we watch as he reads “Silver Surfer” comics and listens to a radio discussion about putting a man on the moon. It’s not long before his dreams are snatched away, and we learn why Elwood hitched a ride to school with a complete stranger. Just moments before this, a pickup truck passed him, its flatbed dragging an enormous wooden cross, skidding sparks across the asphalt.

As an adult, Elwood encounters a former classmate who orders a drink before expressing a long list of what he could have achieved if not for the torment they suffered.

The scene calls back to a lecture they received when they were still children, from Blakely, the “house father” of the Nickel dorms and the only Black man among the adults in charge. Blakely tells them, “dreams don’t matter if God wants you to be a trashman.”

But what if God wants something else? How are you supposed to function in a system that doesn’t want you to exist?

There’s a moment back at Nickel where Elwood and Turner are attending a boxing match between Nickel’s strongest Black student and his white opponent from up the road. Though he knows the match is rigged in favor of the white boxer, Turner loses himself in the violence, shedding his too-cool and detached persona to indulge in this display of vengeance.

Elwood cautions him. “This isn’t the fight.” Unfortunately, everything else is.

“Nickel Boys” is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video and will be available on MGM+ on February 28.