Ambition and empathy rarely reach out and touch on the silver screen, their aims seemingly at odds with one another. The former is often defined by scale and technical accomplishment, oriented toward shock and awe, while the latter prefers intimate proximity and the soft-spoken grace note. It’s not a hard and fast rule so much as a retreat to a pair of divergent comfort zones, though RaMell Ross has no use for decamping. The college-basketball-star-turned-photographer-turned-professor-turned-filmmaker’s multi-hyphenate accolades suggest a person who doesn’t see a problem with crossing the beams, a panoptic worldview that’s stretched to its logical conclusion in Nickel Boys. It takes a lot to blow minds or tug heartstrings; performing the two feats simultaneously is almost unthinkable, a highwire act that necessitates a crystalline plan of attack. So attack he does, pushing both levers up until the equalizer threatens to explode.

Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel The Nickel Boys, the film doesn’t so much follow as inhabit Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), a Black teenager growing up in Tallahassee contemporaneously with the Dr. Martin Luther King-led civil rights marches of the 1960’s. Loath to speechify and blessed with immense observational gifts, Elwood’s classroom achievements afford him early placement at a local university, but book smarts and earth-bound savvy don’t always come in tandem. After unwittingly accepting a ride in a stolen car, our avatar is sent to Nickel Academy, a juvenile reform school who’s rules and regulations are draconian at best, and sinister at worst. He becomes fast friends with the decidedly more world-wary Turner (Brandon Wilson), the two forming a bond that provides light in encroaching darkness.

The above descriptions that make Elwood out to be a conduit of sorts are intentional, with Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray situating the viewer squarely in the cat bird’s seat for the movie’s plethora of harrowing events. Ostensibly filmed from behind the eyes of its protagonist, Nickel Boys presents itself as a POV experience akin to Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, complete with the oddly echoing vocals that seem to come straight from the viewers’ mouth. Just like that 2009 cult classic, Ross’ film can’t help but go looking for fresh air, swapping out Void’s drifting journey through Tokyo’s seedy underground for a slew of found footage interstitials that deepen both mood and context. As impressive as it is unnerving, the tactical wizardry at play contains a counterintuitive distancing effect, wherein the who and what of it all can’t help but be trampled by the how.

Elwood’s reluctance toward self-advocacy, which theoretically offers his wandering eye the opportunity to elucidate his character, turns him into a cypher, a regrettable result in a story concerning the use of Black bodies as tools for the gain of others. The ethical quagmire here is likely meant as a provocation, making the audience complicit in the film’s older white antagonists’ perpetrations, but it dilutes the personality of our central figure until there’s nothing left to grasp. Worse still, the novelty of the camera work can’t help but constantly call attention to itself, with every odd angle and unfamiliar movement pulling the viewer out of the proceedings, questioning the veracity of the proceedings instead of being drawn into their narrative thrust. 

Given everything the apparatus does to unintentionally hold the events of the film at arm’s length, the cast is saddled with the unenviable job of drawing them back. Herisse remains the least fully realized of the participants, though it’s hard to blame a performer who’s asked to step out of the way of his own story. Wilson fares much better, combining effortless naturalism with breezy charisma in a way that suggests a movie star laying in wait. But it’s Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, playing a dual role as both Elwood’s gently loving grandmother and Nickel Boys’ in-house tear-duct stimulator, who makes the biggest mark despite having the least screen time. The dreamy asides she’s given prove more emotionally impactful than any of the horrors the boys face, and when she turns her attentions toward the camera, speaking to Elwood or Turner as a means of directly addressing the audience, denying the pull of her actorly gravity is a non-starter. 

It’s not often that a thespian gets to reach out across a darkened auditorium and communicate with the viewer head-on, a move practically trademarked by Jonathan Demme that’s gone out of fashion given its inherently confrontational attributes. Even Ross can’t help but relent, eventually hopping head spaces in a manner that’s initially exhilarating before the same issues of detachment crop up through a new set of retinas. The move ultimately reduces the film’s subsequent interactions to a slightly modified version of shot-reverse-shot, returning its more enterprising affectations to safer shores. Another enticing pivot, in which Frey captures a third protagonist from behind rather than inside, inspires further grounds for wrestling with formal choices that can’t help but distract. The disembodiment it presents is in keeping with the larger themes at play, but once again makes it all but impossible to simply immerse oneself in the images and occurrences that are being presented.

If all this technological jargon sounds high-falutin or inconsequential for the common movie goer, it’s worth considering how few of their ilk will ever think to see Nickel Boys. With difficult subject matter and galaxy-brained tailoring, Ross knows this one is for the cinephiles, those who will appreciate his omnipresent stylistic references to 2011’s​ The Tree of Life. Malick’s film also used beatific lensing to locate an intersection between here and now vivacity and the hallowed glow of memory, but its more traditional framing left space for interpretation. Ross has a tighter grip on the wheel, one that deprives his movie of the urgency its conceptual scaffolding was seemingly designed to bolster. It’s all very studied and considered, leaving room for subsequent viewings to illuminate the many justifications and benefits that the director and company have stashed away, eagerly awaiting discovery. On first viewing, all the gymnastics get in the way, resulting in an empathetic movie whose characters are unknowable, and a work of showmanship that’s easier to study than adore. Credit Ross for sneaking an art installation into your local multiplex. It just might not belong there.