Subjectivity can be a hard thing to depict in cinema. Even in the most immersive, captivating movies, there exists the perpetual sense that we, the audience, are not the protagonist we see on the screen – because we see them on the screen. The words of a novel may get inside the reader’s head, painting a picture unique to said reader. Enabling them to vicariously live the characters’ experiences. In a way, the reader can become the character. First-person narration can actually disable this quality, and the experiences become something described to the reader by a character.
In Nickel Boys, acclaimed documentarian RaMell Ross’ first fictional feature, he attempts something genuinely audacious. A cinematic equivalent of first-person narration, only here the aim is not to disable the vicarious experience for the viewer, but rather to evoke it pointedly, vividly. We, the audience, may see our protagonists on the screen, we may have that perpetual sense that we are not them, that we are merely observing their scripted, staged, filmed experiences. But Ross wants us to observe them in a new way.
It’s quite the gambit, and it largely pays off. Ross’ camera views the action as would his central characters, two teenage boys at an abusive youth correctional facility in the 1960s American South. Other characters gaze and speak into the lens, and the protagonist’s voice is heard disembodied, as though emanating inward from the screen itself. The immersive quality isn’t entirely fulfilled. Fundamentally, one ought to feel as though everything contained within the image is the entirety of the on-screen action. Whereas here the fourth wall is broken without relent. But Ross is too sensitive a director, too astute an observer himself of the details that comprise a real, fully inhabited world to allow his main artistic conceit to negate the immersion completely.
His world does feel real. It does feel fully inhabited. And that conceit permits a kind of identification with the protagonists that passive, third-person storytelling may not. It’s a quintessentially non-judgemental technique he’s basically pioneering in Nickel Boys. Not that he affords much space for judgement – these two boys are depicted with near-saintly reverence.
The issue with Nickel Boys isn’t in this technique. It’s in almost everything else. Ross has committed himself to a level of realism that goes beyond even that seen in documentaries. Where one is aware that the figures on screen are themselves aware of the filming crew in their presence. But he commits to that realism only in theory through his first-person style; it’s elsewhere frustratingly absent. He gets away with it when he leans into other styles, letting the sense of immediacy abate and creating more impressionistic sequences that suggest hazy recollections and sense memories.
This just about fits into his conceit, since he plays with perspective throughout. And since the conventional temporal structure of the movie does imply that the whole story is all just remembrances. A crucial closing detail does undermine this however. What he doesn’t get away with is the literariness, the theatricality, the overstatement.
For something that should feel palpably real, moments where this is true are few and far between. Characters speak with an eloquence and a clarity of character that sounds lifted straight off a page. And the movie is art directed with a slickness that conflicts with the commitment to realism. In this environment, such staginess, combined with the slightly corny virtuousness of the protagonists, rings distinctly false. Time and time again, the audience is reminded that, indeed, we are not those protagonists. We see them on the screen, and what we see and hear doesn’t quite feel real.
This makes Nickel Boys a rather inconsistent watch – at times inspired, at others questionable. It would be easy to applaud Ross were he consistently successful in his objectives, and easy to lambast him were he consistently unsuccessful. That he makes such a risky core gambit work, for the most part, is certainly worthy of applause, and he crafts several impactful sequences (a chilling scene of unwarranted punishment, and a tense, brief chase scene stand out) that bolster the case that, ultimately, he hasn’t bitten off more than he can chew, he has done something truly creative and that the rewards for his efforts are apparent in the work itself. He just hasn’t quite calibrated his experiment to perfection – an understandable failing, and a fairly minor one, but a failing all the same.
Nickel Boys is a remarkable film, but more so academically than actually. Subjectively, it’s a bit of a disappointment.
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