Ramell Ross’s first fiction film, after his Oscar -nominated documentary ‘Hale County This Morning, This Evening’, continues to explore the racial wounds of the United States. Adapting the homonymous novel winning fiction Pulitzer in 2020, he tells the story of friendship between two teenagers in a Florida reformatory, historically known for his abusive and denigrating methods.
From the dazzling start, where the screen is flooded with a cataract of beautiful images (Jomo Fray’s photography), Ross demonstrates not only to be a skilled visual narrator, but also notable sensitivity and personality. The poetic and deeply melancholic style is accentuated with the daring formal proposal presented by the filmmaker, who composes the entire film from the first person, counting the story always in a subjective plane.
The rigor of the staging and the impressive display of visual ideas are more than admirable, especially considering that it is its first fiction in fiction and only its second film in total. Despite – or consequently, this, its enormous artistic ambition is damaged by the emotional barrier that continuously ends up. At the narrative level, the tape is losing power as it advances, and the distance between the spectator and the story becomes progressively bigger, to the point that the shocking themes that cover end up becoming almost secondary.
It is greatly appreciated, yes, that Ross bet on a racial denunciation cinema that does not yell at your face, nor falls into didactisms and obvious. Instead, ‘Nickel Boys’ offers an absolutely sad and angry vision but exempt from that annoying literalness of Hollywood commercial cinema. Therefore, his Oscar nomination for best film surprises -for well -, for the radicality of the proposal and its deep author vocation, where you can see some influence of the Malick of ‘The Tree of Life’.
Of course, Ross is still far from the maturity level of Malick’s Magna, and his film never reaches that philosophical-Divine impact, but he does leave the impression that we are facing a valuable filmmaker. There are many things to polish, but nothing that seems to indicate that, with a more solid balance between form and content, Ross can become a key figure for American independent cinema. ‘Nickel Boys’ is one of those films that, although not excited, are a sample of raw talent.
