Shadows on the Wall | Nickel Boys

Nickel Boys

dir RaMell Ross
scr RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes
prd Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Joslyn Barnes, David Levine
with Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, Hamish Linklater, Jimmie Fails, Gralen Bryant Banks, Ethan Cole Sharp, Craig Tate, Tanyell Waivers, Sara Osi Scott
release US 13.Dec.24,
UK 3.Jan.25
24/US 2h20

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Resolutely artful, this collage-style movie is more like a cinematic poem than a narrative film based on a true story that runs deeply into the racial injustice woven into the fabric of the American South. Filmmaker RaMell Ross skilfully mixes honest feelings of hope and resignation using a distinct first-person approach. So if the filmmaking is sometimes a bit indulgent, this is an urgently optimistic look at injustice.

In early 1960s Tallahassee, the observant Elwood (Herisse) has grown up with his grandmother Hattie (Ellis-Taylor) to understand harsh realities alongside the hope that leaders like Martin Luther King Jr bring. Then at 17 as he's heading to vocational college, he is wrongly arrested and sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school that's actually a hard-labour camp. Director Spencer (Linklater) oversees the most vicious punishment, hidden in an out building from which some boys never return. But Elwood finds a friend in more cynical inmate Turner (Wilson), who tries to keep Elwood's idealism in check.

Visually stunning, the film is set within a square frame that sees through the eyes of either Elwood or Turner. Along with an astonishingly textured sound mix, the cinematography (by Jomo Fray) and editing (by Nicholas Monsour) are immersive, even when flickering through home movies, photographs and archival footage, then into the future to catch up with Elwood (now Diggs) later in life as he works to tell the full story of what happened at Nickel, something he began to document in a journal while he was there.

This journal creates palpable tension between Elwood and Turner, who differ on whether they can escape this awful place. Herisse and Wilson skilfully provide the necessary layers to young men who have faced the wall of racism as long as they can remember. Even if the shooting style prevents them from being on-screen together, aside from one reflective moment, they have sharply nuanced camaraderie. Ellis-Taylor brings a blast of sunshine that's almost unnervingly honest. And Hechinger is a standout as a white inmate who of course has privileges the Black boys don't.

Ross makes it bracingly clear that the Jim Crow system merely extended slavery for another century. And amid the telling details are comments that elements of this still linger today, most pointedly in policing and courtrooms. So while it feels somewhat elusive with its mumbly dialog and deliberate reluctance to plainly state elements of the narrative, this is a vitally important film with a lot to say about both history and the future.

themes, language, violence 19.Sep.24

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