Part of Best Picture Marathon
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, NICKEL BOYS chronicles the powerful friendship between two young African American men navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida. Directed by RaMell Ross (HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING).
“The kind of story that probably could have been adapted in more conventional fashion. It could have jerked easy tears from us — earned tears, to be sure, prompted by our horror at what we’d be seeing onscreen and everything it implied. But there’s something truer and more unshakable about what Ross has given us. In refusing a conventional, objective (and objectified) approach to suffering, he resists easy attempts at pathos. What he achieves here is more powerful and complex.” —Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
“There are outstanding performances here from [Aunjanue] Ellis-Taylor, [Ethan] Herisse and [Brandon] Wilson, and Jomo Fray’s cinematography and Nora Mendis’s production design are exceptional too. This is a survivor’s coming of age: tough, disillusioned, brilliant.” —Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
“Ross, honoring the perspective shift that characterizes [Colson] Whitehead’s novel, switches between Elwood and Turner’s points of view, remaining, at all times, in the subjective mode. The commitment to this way of storytelling imbues NICKEL BOYS with an overwhelming intimacy and becomes another way that Ross, as a filmmaker, stretches what it means to represent Black people.” —Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter