Despite the preconceived notions the star rating above this writing might bring, I do not think Nickel Boys is a film that is beyond reproach or that its unique formal conceit makes it some automatically radical object. In the midst of award season, it’s easy to get caught up in bland platitudes when discussing whatever shiny new film is being hyped up by most critics/awards pundits. Good criticism that pushes back against the loud consensus becomes important, especially when these awards films usually embody what is popular formally/politically within the non blockbuster areas of popular American cinema (and to be more precise, the limits of that space.)The urge to destroy as it is in this instance is always better or at least more interesting, than all too eager and uncritical “OhMyGod look at the beauty of this epic masterpiece”-ing the film scene gets caught up in. To try and defend a critical darling from this, is far from the most admirable stance to take. Yet that being said…

Walking out of this film at the New York Film Festival, I thought I knew exactly what lines of thought were going to be used to critique it and wondered if there would be another angle to deconstruct flaws I couldn’t see in what Ross has done here. As more reviews on LB trickle in, the negative reviews (some of which are from people who I consider to be deeply intelligent ) are pretty much beat by beat what I predicted would be said. I say this not to prove my superiority over anyone or the film’s but I do think certain modes of discourse around the occasional “experimental” movie that gets mainstream attention are pretty rote, especially with this one. I assume these conversations will increase in intensity in the coming months and I wanted to write about this film and these talking points, not to get a jump on the discourse or to protect a sacred cow but to suggest that this film, while perhaps not perfect in every single idea it can be applied to, is singular to the point where it resists easy categorization that can be thrown at it.

While the actual film will be discussed, I do think its necessary to question the immediate skepticism that comes with the movie which is tied to a very singular formal conceit: that its tied to a very singular formal conceit. The current (specifically American) film criticism scene seems very complacent in accepting a movie if it has cool camera tricks without seriously considering what said tricks actually convey because of the showmanship on display (see every time someone posts that one fucking Babylon clip.) The “experimental” Oscar movie as we’ll loosely and fairly reductively call it (The Zone of Interest, The Tree of Life) get lavish praise for simply doing something that most mainstream films don’t despite still having a digestible narrative. Again, skepticism around the supposed radical nature of these films is more than sensible given both the usual hyperbole of the praise they receive and the environments they are introduced in. 

Yet I think this framework for considering Nickel Boys is flimsy to say the least. See, I figured that the Big Take about this film would be that its conceit is inherently myopic when it believes it’s seamless. For a number of reasons I think this is as narrow-minded as saying Ross’s form is a new cinematic language or something. The formal ideas that Nickel Boys presents deal in inconclusiveness, even as they suggest a whole coming together when the POVs of its main characters converge. To say nothing of how it’s final 30 minutes play out, the film consistently brings its ideals of representation head to head with archival footage, contrasting its attempt to fill in the racial blanks of history with the looming reality that despite whatever Ross does, American images are shot by the privileged and become dominant forms of identification with black life. 

In short, I don’t think RaMell Ross believes he has solved the multifaceted issue of historical representation by making the whole film a POV shot and I don’t think its compelling criticism to assume that of him. This assumption that tackling atrocity though a singular formal conceit immediately makes the film close-minded rings hollow to me. It creates an easy shorthand to dismiss any noticeable formal choice Ross makes as navel gazing without considering what his and cinematographer Jomo Fray’s intended effect was, regardless of whether that intent was successful or not. The reductive praise of the obvious in current cinephilia has encouraged certain writers to in turn view any formalism noticeable to a layman as too didactic. This line of thinking reads the idea on paper and ensures Ross has already failed his mandate by virtue of wanting to be direct to some extent. You mean my Dad could notice what is being done with the camera and the edit and [GASP] maybe even immediately understand the thematic idea it’s getting at? I mean it might as well be a Marvel movie at that point.

I’m being facetious there but it’s important to note, I was suspicious that Nickel Boys could be a “white elephant” movie to quote Manny Farber as I walked into it. The POV concept seems something more at home in a video game than in a film about system racism as literal murder but my fears subsided pretty quickly as I watched the film unfold. Another critique I expected to be leveled at the film’s formal ideas is that the beauty it presents either negates the horror shown or creates a dichotomy to it that is too simplistic. Yet Ross isn’t leaning back on faux-Malickian ideas of “pure beauty,” the film is working in something much more specific. The use of shallow focus is quite striking, unlike many modern films which use it to suggest depths of field that the director has no idea how to convey less subtly (Alex Garland’s Civil War,) Nickel Boys gives you minute glimpses of detail such as light coming through a shot glass of beer, images which work to create not only a subjective context to everything we see but a social one which expands once the film reaches its school setting for the bulk of its runtime. The way Ross gives the whole picture through pieces of it isn’t just a display of banal beauty, it also teaches the viewer how to perceive the violence its characters experience later in the film. I think the director knows racial violence permeates every frame of the film (even the “pretty” parts are retroactively colored by what comes after them, something the film utilizes with the alligator motif) so he makes the smart choice to not emphasize violence every step of the way (or at least direct physical violence as there are so many different forms of harm throughout the film) so he can encourage his audience to look for its various manifestations for themselves.

The completely subjective perspective isn’t a complacent one. Unlike The Zone of Interest which was fairly critiqued for keeping the viewer behind a safety net with its approach to the Holocaust, Nickel Boys is a much more active and dynamic experience. The film encourages the viewer to think through the traumatic effect of the racism being shown, find the layers of socio political context Ross is presenting and occasionally, be confronted with the reality beyond the screen that Ross himself is reckoning with through the use of archival footage. The later aspect could be swept under the rug as more blunt “navel gazing” but if the conversation around this film is going to be centered around the all encompassing nature of what it’s form is attempting, its worth highlighting how archival footage is used to break and challenge this singular focus. This alone doesn’t make the film deep but I think it’s a sign of a filmmaker who is not willing to place all his thematic eggs in one basket. Nickel Boys is not bulletproof (no film is or should be) but it is a work whose choices are meticulously designed and thought through with rigor, to the point where throwing it onto the Oscar junk heap for being too simplistic for the high crime of maybe having its experimentation be accessible, shows to me, a lack of imagination or dexterity that the film itself has plenty of.