Nickel Boys

Film - 2024

4,0

3.9K

Nickel Boys it's a movie with Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger Full cast. Directed by RaMell Ross. Original title Nickel Boys, runtime 140 minutes. Genres Drama, History.

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Review of

Emiliano Baglio

Seen in Alice in the City 2024. Opening film. We admit it, we haven't read The Nickel Boys, the novel by Colson Whitehead on which RaMell Ross's film is based. Maybe the work will develop in the form of a stream of consciousness like Joyce's Ulysses; otherwise we cannot find other explanations for Ross' directorial choices. We are in the United States of the 1960s, the era of struggles for the recognition of civil rights for blacks. Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) is a promising young African-American who is going to high school and will accept a ride from the wrong person; a thief. He will thus end up at the Nickel Academy, a reformatory, where he will try to survive the hard daily life also helped by his close friendship with Jack Turner (Brandon Wilson). The film starts from Elwood's childhood, spent with his grandmother Hattie ( Aunjanue Ellis), twenty minutes almost completely devoid of dialogue composed of very short sequences, sometimes under a minute. Fragments of life that seem thrown at random between askew shots and apparently insignificant details; a close-up of the protagonist picking up a coin, him as a child playing with his grandmother under the white blankets, details of the iron or a row of shoes in a corridor. Soon you understand the game; these are essentially subjective shots of the protagonist. The problem is that 90% of the film is practically shot like this, alternating subjective and semi-subjective shots. Maybe the intent was to lead to a total identification with the protagonist; the result is that little or nothing is understood. Things become even more complicated when Jack enters the scene, given that the two points of view will overlap. Not happy, Ross occasionally inserts images unrelated to the story; sequences from The Mud Wall (1958) by Stanley Kramer or the Apollo 8 mission; both to do Read all

plot

Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.