If films were meant to put to screen the experience of lives we will each never know in a multi-sense manner, then Nickel Boys is redefining what this experience can mean. We watch a car go past us as we wait for a drive, we reach for our spoon to bring our breakfast to our mouth, we make knowing eye-contact with a friend from across the room. We look at our reflection, that we know is not ours forever, but one that is ours for just 2.5 hours. In RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys, we see the world almost entirely from the first person point-of-view of Elwood and Turner, two young black teens sent to live at Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory school in 1960s Florida, where Jim Crow laws are still in effect. Based on the real life, devastating story of the Dozier School for Boys, and the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Nickel Boys written by Colson Whitehead, Ross’ translation of the novel onto the screen is one that will go down as cinema defining in the year 2024. Pushing boundaries on what gaze means in film, while brilliantly using this gaze to depicting the horrors of this school from a different perspective, Nickel Boys is one to watch, and one that will sit with you for a long time after.

Nickel Boys follows teens Elwood and Turner, sent to live at Nickel Academy, a reformatory school in 1960s Florida. As two black teens living in a time and state where Jim Crow laws are still in effect, they persevere in a world that is designed to pull them down. Forging a friendship that helps both boys to survive each day of the abuse and brutalities within the school, segregated from their white classmates and treated differently because of their race, they experience the world of the school and Florida, questioning what their future will look like when their present is so unjust.

Nickel Boys is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Nickel Boys written by Colson Whitehead, which is based on the real Dozier School for Boys. The school operated from January 1900 until its closure in June 2011, and throughout its history in Florida gained a reputation for abuse, beatings, and even murder of students by the staff of the school. After its closure, unmarked graves were found on the site of the school, where teams are still working to identify those murdered and buried.

A story this real and this horrifying would be anything but easy to adapt into a novel, and then into the visual medium of film. How can these injustices and cruelties be captured, visually, in a way that still gives agency and a voice to those who became victim to the abuse, without undermining the true brutalities these boys faced? Director and co-writer RaMell Ross’ vision here is able to clearly articulate both. His solution is to remove the gaze, or the way viewers look at images in any visual medium, that the audience watch through from an “invisible” camera. This means, we do not watch the story of Elwood and Turner at Nickel Academy through a camera that captures their lives as an outsider, from a point of view of a person that really does not exist. Rather, we watch directly from the point of view of these two men themselves. The film is shot almost entirely from the POV of Elwood and Turner, placing everything we watch back within the context of these two young men.

This stylistic choice works so well to place the gaze, and thus the story of the school, back into the hands of those who experienced it. We look at the world directly through their eyes. It makes the mundane, the everyday, the eating, the sleeping and waking up, the glances to a friend, part of their story. We still watch the abuse they face. We watch from Elwood and Turner’s points of view, and these moments are the most difficult to watch. But in the moments in between, we are reminded that these are real lives, not just victims in a news article, but real young men who must endure all 24 hours of a day in the school, which spans from everyday injustices to outright murder.

Through this choice of camera POV, we also see Ross’ attempt to reclaim the story for the survivors of the real Dozier School. It is devastating to know that so many stories like Elwood and Turners have happened in history, and continue to happen today. Hitting hard for myself, living in Canada where mass graves of murdered children continue to be found at former sites of residential schools, Ross’ camera places the story back into the hands of those who experienced the school directly. While news stories are quick to focus on certain aspects of these moments in history, Ross allows space for viewers to be reminded that these young men are more than what happened to them, while never glazing over the fact that this trauma can still become all consuming due to their brutal experiences.

A hundred other filmmakers could have told the same story with the sole purpose of invoking empathy from the audience to get them to feel for what happened to these boys, but Ross’ camera reminds us that there is so much more than just feeling bad for those we see on screen. We experience life with Elwood and Turner, and through that they become real people to us. We experience the world through their eyes, not just certain events that newsreels tend to focus on, making them more whole to us, rather than solely portraying them as victims of a traumatic event.

Alongside this clever use of the point of view of Elwood and Turner, there is also a unique story structure put to play here that has a lasting impact. There is a slightly disjointed narrative structure here, where we mainly follow young Elwood and Turner, but also jump in time to see an older man as he follows the ongoing investigation into Nickel Academy. Photographs and videos of this future are shown to us throughout the film, which come together at the end as viewers are let in on what they are being shown. Elwood and Turner’s story is devastating to experience, but this disjointed structure also allows us to feel slivers of hope, to see a glimpse into a future where justice is beginning to be reached, as we question what we are watching but also how this will impact the future of the boys that looks so bleak.

As a naive Canadian, I first learned of the Dozier School through hearing about the novel, The Nickel Boys. For myself, I was shocked at the atrocities that were occurring and horrifying secrets that were being hidden at this school until 2011, remaining open until I myself was 11 years old. Because of my unfamiliarity with the historical story, the story structure worked to hit my emotions hard by the end of the film, slowly revealing itself and the meaning of the images and the future version of the students as I realized what had happened at the school.

The innovation in the art of film present in RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys asks us to examine how we interact with a film when depicting traumatic events. How a camera can be used to craft a reflection of our world through characters that represent us, those around us, and those who have experienced the world before us. How it is used to teach us about the past, so we can have a brighter future. Nickel Boys takes us back to 1960s Florida, based on the real life injustices that occurred at the Dozier School for Boys. It shows us history, the story of Elwood and Turner, student at the school, so we can make a better future. But it also gives us a glimpse into what, I hope, will be the start of a new future of film.

Pushing boundaries both visually and in its narrative structure, Nickel Boys is one of the best of the year, and experiments with the way viewers look at images on screen to mold how we empathize with and experience what we watch. Here, we don’t simply look at two boys trying to survive abuse and injustices from an invisible persons eyes. Through a stylistic camera, we are able to somewhat experience it with them. We are not asked to simply have empathy for the characters, but rather to experience the world through them. This, I believe, is in hopes that our experience with them will help begin to show us how we can begin to build a brighter future, based on the collective mistakes of our past, remembering the boys as more than just victims.

Nickel Boys will be released in theatres across Canada on December 20, 2024.