Colson Whitehead’s novel gets a remarkable adaptation

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RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys has already picked up Best Picture nominations from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, as well as a spot on Mashable’s list of the best movies of 2024. Now, a new trailer gives us a closer look at the much-lauded film.

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Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Nickel Boys relies heavily on first-person POV shots to put the audience in the visceral position of identifying with its protagonists in Jim Crow-era Florida. We inhabit the perspective of 16-year-old Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), who is wrongfully sent to the Nickel Academy “reform” school, which Whitehead based on the Dozier School for Boys in Florida. There, Elwood and other students endure unbearable abuse from the staff. Yet Elwood also finds a friend in fellow student Turner (Brandon Wilson), whose POV we also inhabit at times.

In his review for Mashable, Siddhant Adlakha writes, “The camera constructs a powerful sense of self and personhood through the kind of thoughtful, propulsive artistry the American mainstream has seldom seen, making its opposition to violence and racist oppression wholly self-evident through its visual approach. The film is unlike anything else, but it feels intimately familiar.”

Nickel Boys is now in limited theaters.