For 111 years after it opened in 1900, Florida’s School for Boys, nicknamed the Nickel Academy, operated officially as a reform school for troubled youths, but harbored painful secrets rooted in racism and cruelty. RaMell Ross’s film Nickel Boys, adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, tells just a fraction of the horrors that took place at the school in the Jim Crow era, but it’s also a film of staggering beauty. Through a risky creative choice, Ross has created one of the most empathetic films in recent memory, and one of the best of the year.

Ross, whose only previous film was the Oscar nominated documentary Hale County, This Morning, This Evening, chooses to shoot the film solely through first-person perspective – and third-person for brief, flash forward scenes. It’s a decision that could easily come across as a gimmick, a distraction from the narrative at hand, but it becomes clear from the film’s opening minutes that the purpose is to take in life’s little details that might otherwise go unnoticed. 

We see things mostly through Elwood Curtis’s (Ethan Herisse) point of view as he grows up under the tutelage of his grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) in Tallahassee in the early 60s. We see the clothes she irons, the angel food cake as she removes the frosting from her knife, the ceiling in Elwood’s classroom, punctured repeatedly from pencils by his classmates. All of this serves as a reminder of what he loses when he’s brought to Nickel Academy after a case of “wrong place, wrong time”, but these details never really go away – rather, we see them less and less frequently.

Thankfully Elwood has Turner (Brandon Wilson), a fellow castaway who helps Elwood learn the lay of the land. Ross, who wrote the adaptation with Joslyn Barnes, exemplifies “show, don’t tell” throughout so much of Nickel Boys that any exposition feels like natural extensions of the world and its characters. We infer so much from Turner just through Wilson’s naturally charismatic performance, even before Ross switches the perspective to him occasionally. There is a system within the Nickel Academy, beyond the official parameters stated once Elwood arrives.

Yes, there are Black and White boys at the school, and both races are treated unfairly, but the Black contingent has a different set of rules to follow, and the consequences are even more severe. But Nickel Boys never feels like an exercise in misery. After the screening, a friend likened the film to last year’s The Zone of Interest, and while I can see the comparisons in the ways both films tackle unspeakable acts of cruelty through an artistic lens, it feels like Ross has more to say about American history and empathy in the end.

There is an understated push-pull within the film, as Elwood and Turner take on differing viewpoints that were prominent at the time. Elwood believes that, with the pertinent information, justice will come to light and someone will do the right thing. This is no coincidence, as Elwood idolizes Martin Luther King, Jr., and listens to his speeches on vinyl. But Turner, who serves as a kind of proxy for Malcolm X, believes that the only person that can save yourself from Nickel Academy is yourself. He’s seen too much and experienced too much to believe in some sort of divine intervention.

There are acts of violence that appear on screen – all the more impressive, given the blocking necessary – but, like The Zone of Interest, the real fear comes from what we don’t see. Thankfully the film never feels like Ross is wagging his finger at our shameful history. As with Whitehead’s novel, Ross manages to make the stories of Elwood and Turner feel real and tragic (by all accounts, Elwood and Turner never actually existed, but are essentially composite characters of what was surely a common experience at the Academy), and not cloying stand-ins for its author to preach about.

One of Ross’s smartest decisions comes in the film’s occasional departures to show newsreel footage of tangentially related events: the Apollo 8 mission, the running of the New York Marathon, snippets from The Defiant Ones with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier, and random vintage home video footage. It provides a fascinating juxtaposition; all of these leaps forward in innovation, human ingenuity, and kindness, thrust against this backdrop of our worst impulses to our fellow man. It’s been so long since a film has felt like a bold, new experiment in storytelling, but Nickel Boys decisively earns this distinction.

Nickel Boys will be released in select theaters on December 13 and expand in subsequent weeks.

OSCAR POTENTIAL:

• The biggest thing holding Nickel Boys back is its box office potential. I wonder how readily audiences will go to see a challenging, artistically minded film like this. Even if it doesn’t make a ton of money, I think Best Picture could be within reach. Same with Ross for Best Director, since the film is, first and foremost, a feat of direction.
• Best Adapted Screenplay seems attainable, at least. Were it not for the across-the-board success of Conclave, it could challenge for a win.
• Here’s hoping Jomo Fray can receive a nomination in Cinematography. Though he may not be much of a known commodity compared to the other potential nominees, I can only imagine how logistically difficult the film was to shoot.
• Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is a previous nominee and, though she’s incredible here, a repeat nomination is unlikely since her role is so small – especially after her Golden Globes snub.