By Rene Jimenez

The film, based on Colson Whitehead's novel “The Nickel Boys”, follows Elwood, a Black boy sent to the Nickel reform school after a wrongful arrest. Nickel is ostensibly juvenile detention. This facility maintains “discipline” through abuse of every kind: physical, psychological, and sexual. The movie jumps back and forth between his youth at Nickel and his life as an adult living with the effects of everything he endured.

Disappointingly this year’s award season has been unfairly overlooking “Nickel Boys”. Not only is it inventive in its presentation, but in my opinion it’s easily in the top 3 of its fellow nominees for best picture. On par with, and in my opinion, better than the likes of The Brutalist and Anora (I’d still recommend all three).

Director Ramell Ross captures this narrative eloquently. Its presentation is fluent in memory, using a first-person perspective and a 4:3 aspect ratio, stripping the audience of omniscience. Even as someone who had already read the book, the film captured me, making me feel like I got to live through someone else's eyes.

For context, while Nickel is fictional, it's based on the real-life Dozier School in Florida. "As Whitehead stated on NPR, "I came across a story of the school in 2014. They wanted to sell the property, the state of Florida did. And they started exhuming the official graveyard, and then they found a lot of unmarked graves. And some archaeology students started excavating the unmarked graves and trying to ID different students who'd been there.”

Reality and fiction don't blur here; they merge into a single, inescapable truth. One and the same, at its center this is a story of children who suffered when they didn’t have to.

Ross’s background as a documentary filmmaker was exactly what was needed to bring this adaptation to the big screen. One of my favorite qualities of the film is the use of archival footage and photos.

During a very gruesome scene where Elwood is subject to violence, the striking of his body is cut with obfuscated images of the real boys of Dozier. It's a powerful statement on the relationship between art and reality, made without over-explaining.

The film’s score is effective in making the audience feel like they'reexperiencing a memory. Like a worn CD skipping over time, the score distorts and scratches, mirroring the fragility of memory. Blurring this memory of its truth, illuminating how often our present-day Elwood has remembered his time at Nickel.

The talent on display is critical to mention. I could go on about the film's script, editing, and score, but the actors are the true powerhouses. Young actors Brandon Wilson (Elwood) and Ethan Herisse (Curtis) play the film’s leads. They capture so well what it's like to not only be a boy in that awful place, but what it's like to be a boy at that age.

Wilson naturally embodies shyness, while Herisse exudes a rebellious energy. Their chemistry is fantastic, they feel like real friends who care about each other and who only really have one another in Nickel.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Elwood's grandmother Hattie. Her compassion when she's facing the camera fills the audience with the warmth of a maternal figure. Of the film's most powerful scenes, she dominated many despite her brief screen time.

When she apologizes to Elwood about not doing more despite raising a fine young man the best she knows how. You really feel her hurt.

If it doesn't at least win best adapted screenplay at this year's academyawards, I'll be disappointed. If it miraculously wins best-picture, I'll be clapping in my living room.

I don't imagine a world where ten years from now this isn't celebrated as a classic of the 2020's. In the same way that "The Shawshank Redemption" didn't gain an audience until years after its run, I think the same will happen with this movie. As the book becomes a staple in school curricula, this film will serve as an ideal companion for high school English classes. The overdue appreciation will follow.

A Nickel For Your Thoughts