RaMell Ross’s ‘Nickel Boys’ Brings to Life the Notorious Cruelty of a Southern Reform School

Director RaMell Ross makes no apologies for the emphasis on the black South in his work. His first feature-length documentary, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” captures the educational experiences, class struggles and repercussions of Jim Crow segregation in an Alabama community, earning him an Academy Award nomination in 2019.

“Nickel Boys,” Ross’ first narrative feature film, continues his professional and personal mission. He and producer Joslyn Barnes adapted the film from Colson Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Nickel Boys.”

The story takes place at the fictional Nickel Academy, based on the notoriously cruel Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys near Tallahassee, Florida, which operated for 111 years before being shut down by the Department of Justice in 2011. Much worse than white kids. under the institution’s watch, hundreds of black children were physically and emotionally abused without any accountability. Nearly 100 teenagers and boys – and perhaps more – died on his land, many of them buried in unmarked graves.

“It felt like a perfect fit,” said Ross, who lives part-time in Alabama. “I was a black boy and I see myself specifically in Elwood because I grew up with a lot of love. I was a very, very, very good kid because I was afraid that something small would happen and it would just escalate, that life would go off the rails, that I would let my parents down and everything they have been wasted.

For Ross, “Nickel Boys” also has a lot to do with his acclaimed documentary.

“I think I made an unintentional proof of concept when I made ‘Hale County This Morning, This Evening,’ and the aesthetic of this film is an evolution of that,” he admitted.

Of the two main characters in “Nickel Boys,” Jack Turner, played by Brandon Wilson, is the more experienced and he befriends the more naive Elwood Curtis, whose bright future as a student in the early 1960s becomes ends when he agrees to drive an older black man in a stolen car.

Turner and Elwood offer audiences entry into the heinous world of Nickel, a segregated juvenile correctional facility for boys. Unlike Turner, Elwood, played by Ethan Herisse, has a loving grandmother Hattie, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who did her best to protect him as a child and fights to free him from Dozier.

Ross said it was important that the actors playing Elwood and Turner seemed timeless. “There’s something about making historical productions or exploring history in which we overindex the symbolism, the speech, the clothing and the background, the environment, that pushes them into this capsule weird part of history,” he explained.

“I would say there’s something subconscious happening where you’re like, ‘They’re not like us.’ They are not exactly the same as us. Or maybe there’s something different. Times were different,” he continued. “We insisted on finding two boys who felt like now, who could also feel like then, which is kind of now, which is also then.”

Ross also shared his admiration for Ellis-Taylor, to whom he, along with Herisse and Wilson, presented the Social Impact Award for their film at the Critics Choice Association Celebration of Black Cinema & Television in Los Angeles this month.

“She actually lives the character, which is a little bit painful when the scenes are really, really emotional because we shoot them four or five times,” he said.

But Ellis-Taylor knows it’s part of the job.

“This is the kind of work I want to do,” said Ellis-Taylor, who received an Oscar nomination for her role in 2021’s “King Richard,” and is starting to receive Oscar buzz for “Nickel Boys.” “. “I’m beyond blessed to work with someone like RaMell Ross, to work with Ethan Herisse, to work with Brandon Wilson and to be a part of a narrative that I think does some justice to these kids at the school Dozier.”

Figuring out how to present the brutality of this painful story without glorifying it or turning it into trauma porn was a huge challenge for Ross, who is more than aware of how reckless violence against black bodies has historically been captured in photography, the cinema and even on the ground. news.

In contrast, Ross thought about ways to capture how “somatic, psychological and completely absorbed” this brutality is. This is reflected in the way the film is shot, through the points of view of the different characters.

Ross’s accolades indicate that critics appreciate his approach. He has previously won Best Director awards at the Gotham Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards and received a nomination at the Critics Choice Awards. As a film, “Nickel Boys,” which also stars Daveed Diggs in a small but important role, received several best picture awards, including at the Golden Globes.

“The story is quite heartbreaking,” Ross admitted, but added that “I think the ending is ultimately hopeful.” He sees it as “the kind of redemption that a lot of people are looking for when they watch” a sad and heavy film.

However, this hope, he shared, “presents itself in a more conceptual way.”