I didn’t have plans to watch this movie. I already knew the story about the beatings, death and sexual abuse that took place at the Dozier Reform School in Florida, that was the true story that the novel and movie was based on. I know that it’s an important story that needs to be told and retold but I’m also cautious about my own emotional bandwidth to deal with our country’s tragic history. I was also aware that the filmmakers had chosen a POV technique to tell the story where we the audience were literally looking at things from the point of view of that scene’s main character, usually Elwood Curtis played by Ethan Herisse. The majority of the movie is told from Elwood’s point of view, but there are a couple of times when the POV shifts to his friend, Turner, played by Brandon Wilson and the only time we see both characters is when they pass under a mirror ceiling and look up, which is the image in the movie poster.
The POV technique helped maintain the immediacy and personal nature of the story being told. The unending oppression of having to be very careful and invisible around white people when you’re just a kid shopping in town, where anybody, usually an older white man can force you to stand at attention while he goes through your belongings to make sure that you didn’t steal anything from the store you just walked by, and then for him to be within his “rights” to smack you upside the head with his cane for good measure as he walked away disgusted with your existence. The delicate dream of a mother, wanting to protect her only son, hoping to get him into a good technical school when he’s done with high school, that could be swept away just because the son is innocently in the wrong place with the wrong person. It will break your heart.
The movie does bounce around a bit in time and I was a bit confused as to who’s POV we were witnessing as the story rounded to the final act. I saw this movie right after watching “Emilia Perez” so I was already a bit pre-conditioned for stories that don’t have a happy ending. In an era and from a part of the country that want to pretend that this didn’t happen or that it wasn’t “that bad,” this movie was going to have a hard time winning best picture given the nation’s inability to be honest with it’s own history and self-image. It was a beautiful and worthy contender for best picture. It wasn’t on my list to win, but it was better than the winner, in my opinion. 👍👍 two movies down, six to go!
[Movie viewed on 2025-02-25 at Suncoast Cinemark].
Sources:
- NICKEL BOYS | Official Trailer posted by Amazon MGM Studios (2024-09-05), https://youtu.be/-2qZ429rUZw?si=CNdUIkXWusVLf37p
- The True Story Of Abuse And Injustice Behind ‘Nickel Boys’ presented by Dave Davies/NPR Fresh Air (2025-01-17), https://www.npr.org/2025/01/17/1225172120/nickel-boys-colson-whitehead
Tags: 2025 movies, 2025 Oscar contenders, Nickel Boys, movie review, video Mondays
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