Nickel Boys is the film of 2024. It’s expansive yet accessible. It’s violent yet pierced with seconds of warmth. It’s an adaptation that expands Colson Whitehead’s novel, a visual experience that hedges on the audience’s openness, on a person’s willingness to see the world in another form. In director RaMell Ross’s own words, “It’s not intimate. It’s close.”
Shot with a first-person perspective, Ross’ first narrative feature––following his Oscar-nominated debut documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening––follows two Black teenagers as they survive the Nickel Academy, an abusive reform school in Florida. Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson) provide the eyes for this film, which often feels like a collection of moments in one’s life, from an orange rolling out of reach to the trees swaying above, from a hug from your grandmother to the first glimpse of a room in which only horrific things can happen.
Nickel Boys is a textured film, with Ross’ photography background and cinematographer Jomo Fray’s ability to shoot hands, arms, and faces creating an immediate sense of tangibility. The story transcends the page and then the screen, willing to sit in silence after shock, to use archival footage to enhance, not distract, and find power in the simplicity of a lengthened image.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor provides comfort and warmth, Hamish Linklater provides wrath, and Fred Hechinger provides something in between. The performances by Herisse and Wilson are also great, representing an element of merging, of coalescing as memories fuse and lives become interchanged. This film is about Elwood and Turner, but in many ways it could be about any two Black teenagers throughout American history. And Nickel Boys often feels distinctly American, in its contradictions, in its ugliness, and in its supposed reconciliation.
Written by Ross and Joslyn Barnes, the adaptation takes liberties with a popular, already-awarded book, careful to pay homage to these characters yet place them firmly into visible spaces, places people might not recognize but still know: a classroom, a field, a bar. Each of them given additional weight.
Around Nickel Boys‘ New York Film Festival premiere, I sat down with Ross in a New York coffee shop to talk about his work at length. He confirmed my supicions: he’s thought about Nickel Boys in great detail.
This interview contains spoilers and was edited for clarity.
The Film Stage: Nickel Boys is full of textures, from grass to fabrics to spider webs. When you were shooting it with Jomo Fray, how did you attempt to capture these textures through the camera?
RaMell Ross: It’s not something that I’m ever determining, because it’s just the way that I shoot, the way that I think about images. I can think of films that I’ve seen in the past––no need to be mentioned––that don’t have that sort of richness, unsure if it’s because they didn’t know how, or they didn’t want to serve their narrative, or it’s their idea to have it flat. But I want it to have it be a historical-distance piece for a voyeur. It’s kind of my default. I’m going to make a textured image; I’m gonna make this image dense.
It’s just one thing I loved about Jomo. One of the first things he said was, “I want every image to look like your large-format photography.” And that’s how my large format photography is. I shoot with an 8×10 camera, and the positive is 8×10 inches. It’s the densest, richest thing ever. You scan it in. You shoot shadows. It’s just rich.
I loved All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, which Fray also shot. There are many similarities in the way he shoots hands and these other close-ups of body parts with a sense of intimacy. How did you approach those shots with him?
Hale County has a lot of hands in it as well. All people who are visually keen are trying to find meaning. As a human, we go to hands because they are our most active tools. They’re essentially how we touch the world, aside from our feet and our skin, but obviously it’s different. And so, by default, people go there because they articulate so much about a person––where they are, how they feel, what they’re thinking, if they’re anxious––the way their hands are placed. There’s infinite meaning there. Maybe that was an early cinematic language that people have lost track of, and it maybe filtered into the zeitgeist.
In terms of POV: we see our body and our hands are always prominent. Otherwise, if you’re going to try to articulate what it’s like to look through the world, taken out of someone’s head, it wouldn’t make sense to not have the hands be prominent. If you pointed down your body and you were running and you had your hands behind your back, it would look weird. Hands are always at the front of the image. The language of a photo means that it’s someone’s point of view.
There’s a specific shot in Hale County that repeats in Nickel Boys. In your doc, you shot the guys at basketball practice and the game slightly above and behind their head. You do the same when we’re with an older Elwood when he’s sitting at the bar. How’d you come up with that angle in the first place?
[Ross throws his hat on the ground and yells] Thank you!
People keep asking me about that specific shot but I’m like, “Guys: I did the same thing in Hale County.” And also when Daniel is sitting on the bench at the basketball game, when the guy goes and dunks, and then he turns around, looks at the camera. I shot the entire basketball game just like that. I knew that it could carry a scene.
What draws you to that specific shot?
It’s the quintessential follow shot in a documentary, right? That’s how you’d follow someone going into a place. It allows you to frame the world from the momentum of the person. But I’m unsure if you want me to give away the actual formal and conceptual purpose of it in Nickel Boys, because it has a spiritual, psychological meaning that hopefully becomes clear at some point in the film.
When thinking about POV, one thing that Jomo and I noticed early on, the film was written in camera movement. I came to Jomo and I’d want something to look like this and we’d start to build exactly what that feels like. When we got to the moment in which we jump time into the future, we realized that it would be confusing––too confusing––if we use the same camera movement and language for the future adult would. And in thinking about solutions, we came up with this angle, which then seems formal at first, but is in fact Turner being separated from himself. And one could say there’s many ways to interpret it. Elwood is on his shoulders, the ghost of Elwood, the burden of the weight; it’s supposed to have multiple meanings. If it had only one, it would be formal and silly. And when Elwood is shot, it’s the first time that we see Turner like that, right? He goes over his shoulder; he starts running because he’s lost himself. That’s when he was officially chasmed. That’s when he decided that he was going to take Elwood’s identity unconsciously before he went to Hattie’s house.
Over the course of a montage, hopefully you see that he’s having this mental breakdown, this reconstitution, reconstituting himself emotionally through all of his research. He’s doing all this digging. They’re digging; I’m digging. He’s digging into his past. He’s thinking about Elwood, and then you see his face like there’s no need for us to be over his shoulder anymore. And the goal is that once Elwood gets shot, and we pop to the back, a person whose film narrative is sharp understands now that adult Elwood is actually Turner, because that’s the shot we’ve been using the whole time. I think people can get that if they want, but I also like to let them get it after sometimes.
I’m curious about what’s being left offscreen. And in turn, your decision to consistently shoot shadows. What draws you to shadows as an image?
These are more interesting, honestly, because they’re basically making me remember. And then forcing me to think about it. In Hale County, I shot some shadows and then I flipped them upside-down, so it was like they were walking. I’m unsure if that’s what Terrence Malick did in Tree of Life when the boys are dancing around. But maybe spontaneously, there’s something about a clone, or like a twin––it’s such that the contours allow you to project so much about humanity. It’s an imaginative space where you’re just interpreting and making these assumptions, and you’re forced into shape and you’re not given detail. It’s very Rorschach-testy. It’s also deeply spiritual. I’m sure every culture has deep shadow parables and medical metaphors, and I imagine there’s also something fascinating about the relationship between light and time, past and present. I don’t know how long it takes for light to go to create the shadow, but there’s a time gap. And we can’t see it, this time, this shadow of self.
With your photography background, how do you go about adapting a scene? Do you focus on getting to a certain image, such as the dry-cleaned shirt blowing on the car? Or do you just let the scene play out?
I love this, because the film is a photo book. It was organized and written as images, as image movements that are preceded and appended by scenes. And I’m sure you know this, but there are these things called thrown gazes, which most people call macro shots. It’s not POV to us; it’s a team perspective. You can call it “POV,” but it’s in team perspective. And maybe it needs to be called POV so people understand it. But it’s a thrown gaze, which is moments in life when you just hyper-focus on something, and that’s what you see––that’s what you feel while the world’s going on around you. That’s something that happens in trauma; that’s something that human consciousness and attention does.
But in terms of film organization, the film was written all as images, actually. No language and all camera movement, right? We can understand Elwood because he looks at the world by looking at these things. We understand Turner because he looks at the world and looks at these things. These are good ways of seeing it. We never really thought of typical scenes because we always wanted to have each image. Most of the images are called adjacent images because they’re one degree. They’re sidestepping narrative, illustrative clarity. They’re meant to be poetic, overlapping with possible narrative interpretation so that they have the thing that life has. You put the narrative on the thing that exists. That’s poetic. It’s not just utilitarian.
This pseudo-philosophy I have is that cinema skipped photography, and that the second that you were able to do 24 frames per second you started pushing away from the singularity of the image in order for narrative continuity. So the images are just less-powerful because they have a greater aim. But in photography, everything’s in the moment, so you put more meaning into it. That was the goal, that we put all the meaning possible in each image and then have them be adjacent to a narrative, which is then strung over time.
Do you think that’s just something about being short and sweet, though? How there’s more of a punch packed in a poem than a novel? Or a short film versus a feature? When it’s shorter, people usually imbue their own meanings onto it, giving the art more weight.
But I think that the problem with cinema… I mean, I don’t know about the problems with anything. I feel like I sound very predictive, like this is the issue with this huge thing. I don’t know. But one thing that I noticed––and I think most people could argue this––is that cinema could be grander, more interesting, and more than whatever it currently is. Most things are being controlled by the industries which are producing it. I think that has a lot to do with it, the way in which all people are making films that end up being more packaged for legibility, so that they can do it again––so they can be clear, so that people understand.
But then audiences have this thing in which they think life is also that simple. A person went from A to B to C to D. And it was only because of X, Y, and Z, the cause and effect of that produced this outcome. I don’t think that’s true. There’s so much going on that we ignore, that we can’t comprehend. And cinema––sometimes commercial cinema at least––almost parodies that simplicity in which we’d like to see our lives, in which we’d like to think the politics of the world to be black-and-white. When in fact life is more like experimental film, but that doesn’t have money in it.
Photo by Sean DiSerio. Courtesy of the 62nd New York Film Festival
But then how did you make decisions to balance experimentation with more conventionality, especially with a studio like Amazon attached to it? How do you know how far to push it?
First: I wonder what you think first about the word experimental. I love the word “experimental” and I love the word “avant-garde,” but the way that it’s used in relation to studio films and traditional narratives is pejorative. It means that it’s not for normal people, because the person does something with the camera which some people don’t like, which “isn’t easy to understand.”
To me, it more signals taking a different route, taking something and going outside of the norm. Not doing the obvious thing in a scene, image, etc.
Hmm, yeah. I’ve been going through all of these conversations trying to figure out ways to turn it into expansive cinema. It’s like expansive cinema as opposed to experimental cinema. It’s definitely a relative term, though.
Still, you have to decide on a commercial sticking point, right?
I obviously have a lot of power as a director, but I don’t have all the power. I would say that if I had all the power, the film wouldn’t be here right now. It’d be a completely different film, right? I think you need people, and maybe others don’t, but I’m also quite aware that I want my films to be seen, and I want them to be seen by as many people as possible. And I’m not silly enough to think that I know better, you know. So I have really, really, really brilliant people around me––Joslyn Barnes, Dede Gardner, Alana Mayo, Jeremy Kleiner, and David Levine. Those folks that say, “I don’t know about that… let’s talk about this… maybe this is gonna push everyone away.” And then I’ll push back and they’ll push back and we’ll find that place which seems right to me.
Once again: I’m not trying to ostracize, I’m not trying to prove to the world that I can make pretty crazy things. It’s not my aim. It may seem like it because some people write that this is an indulgent film. And that’s just like whatever you say, man. I want the film to be as meaningful, as impactful, and as internal for the person as possible. I know the ways that I do it, but they also know how films are watched, how they’re read. I need them just as much as they need me to help shape it in case I think I’m doing something that I’m not, which happens a lot.
I wanted to ask about the decision to shoot through windows, mirrors, to remain somewhat at arm’s length even though we’re looking through Elwood’s eyes. Why did you choose to still create that extra layer of supposed distance?
That’s the only reason: to be able to see him. It’s a practical thing, right? And I think sometimes the practical turns into meaning, making sights that you then build on, and they become the language of the film. But they start off as practical, right? Like, if we’re going to shoot POV, we’re going to shoot in certain ways. There’s certain things that are the default there, which obviously are choices, but they’re also choices on the back of another choice. How else are we going to see Elwood? We need to see his reflections. And people’s reflections in cinema are rote, but also needed. Can we imagine reflections that haven’t been seen before? You’re still getting to see Elwood, but hopefully it doesn’t feel like it’s like, “Oh, it’s reflection in the car mirror time.”
What about the shot of the two of them looking up, the shot that’s used in the poster?
That was one of the more incredible finds. I’d say 90% to 95% of every image was pre-written. That one was found two weeks in when we were location-scouting. Someone asked earlier, “Was that the moment in the script where both those two are seen together?” And yes: we were gonna see them in an awning reflection. But it wasn’t the exact same. It wasn’t as grand as that one. We were walking the whole time and it was closer to where they see the Martin Luther King cutout. But then we’re going to this location, and I’m walking and I look up and it was just a type of mirror. It was still planning for a reflection. I need to go back to the script; I’ve already quoted and misquoted the script.
Do you feel like you’ve lost track at all between the book and the movie? Between looking back and forth between the two?
We didn’t use as much as one would normally, so it’s easier to keep track of. But The Defiant Ones, I think I couldn’t remember because we brought it in early. And I got really wrapped up in the fact that Ethan looked like Sydney Poitier and that Brandon kind of looks like Harry Belafonte.
But if you think about it, it’s weird what becomes mythologized as symbolic markers of a person’s film, when they sometimes are decisions that have as much to do with what it is like to shoot through a window. It’s to be a voyeur of someone; watching someone from a distance without them knowing. Almost framed within a frame.
But that almost feels contradictory to the internal nature of the film?
The contradictions in that are not only what makes it rich, but also what makes it reality. I imagine a lot of people feel like they’re spending time with someone by watching them even when the other person doesn’t know, even when the other person is doing something intimate. They feel a deep connection. But they’re deeply disconnected because they’re only about to fantasize. And that’s a contradiction. That’s really kind of weird that you’d be staring at someone without them knowing and you feel like you’re with them, but you’re centralizing and almost fetishizing as a voyeur. I don’t know if it’s psychoanalysis or deep psychology. I don’t know. We’re weird.
You mentioned this idea of intimacy. What’s your definition of intimacy? Not necessarily in visual language, but also in everyday life.
I’ve never thought about it before. It’s funny when people talk about the film being intimate, because it doesn’t feel intimate to me. It feels close, but I recognize that people think that it’s intimate and I recognize that it can feel intimate to people. For me, intimacy is only a feeling that is deeply subjective. Maybe there’s a space in which there’s a feeling that is universal––that a lot of people have access to where it overlaps––but I don’t know what that is. I know that I don’t have the same relationship to intimacy as a lot of my partners in the past. I’ve had to understand what their versions of it are, and they would have to understand what my versions of it are, and then you can be more attuned to that person. I know when I feel it.
Is it warmth to you? People keep calling this movie intimate but it’s not always warmth; it can be quite tough.
I like warmth, as either a stepping stone towards it or a star in the constellation of it. I can definitely get down with that. That sounds right; that feels right to me. I don’t think that there’s been a moment in which I’ve felt intimacy and there hasn’t been warmth.
In terms of the religious aspect of the film, I’m interested in the music in the background of the hospital scene. The song you chose is so angelic, with a children’s choir and the light flooding into the room. The entire scene feels out of a church.
It’s interesting what song we chose because we went through a bunch, but that scene was very important to us. To explore, to show, to create a space in which it feels like there’s genuine attention and care and where the larger notions of morality are at play. Everyone’s equal where we sing here, it’s light. It feels clean, the curtains are blowing, the light’s coming through. Then, of course, Elwood doesn’t get any attention. Yet it’s not a contradiction. Religion has been used in a variety of ways to oppress, but that’s what we wanted to bring in: the feeling of holiness. Righteousness is often connected with people doing horrible things. It doesn’t seem to me like there are always clear ties between the way that Christianity and belief in the Bible connects to the capacity for people to apply to one and not to others.
Did you grow up religious?
I felt like I did and I didn’t. We went to church on Christmas, my mom would wake us up and watch it on TV. My dad prays all the time. He used to go to church as a kid. He never imposed it on us, but wanted us to have those moralities. I went to Baptist church with my aunt all the time, but never got into it.
Nickel Boys is now in theaters.