Portrait of the Victim as a Young Man

RaMell Ross’ screen translation of Colson Whitehead’s book “The Nickel Boys” is not, strictly speaking, an adaptation. It is a reimagination. His approach to the material enables viewers to slip inside the consciousnesses of the characters. He achieves this by transforming Whitehead’s compelling third-person narrative into a tale of competing first-person perspectives belonging to Black youths sentenced to a Florida reform school in the 1960s.

We first see the story through the eyes of a curious boy named Elwood, growing up in 1950s Frenchtown, a neighborhood in Tallahassee, Florida. This acutely observant child is dazzled by the lushness of a garden where oranges shine like glistening ornaments on the citrus trees. We hear him listen to recordings of the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. Further into the film, we see him with his girlfriend, their faces reflected in a photo-booth mirror. Soon Elwood, now an optimistic 16-year-old, hitchhikes to college. When the police stop the car, he learns that he has been a passenger in a stolen car and is dispatched to a reformatory.

And so, the smartest, gentlest, most idealistic youth at his high school ends up at the segregated Nickel Academy. (The institution is inspired by now-shuttered Dozier School, where many Black youths were beaten and tortured to death.) There, the principled Elwood (Ethan Herisse) befriends the cynical Turner (Brandon Wilson), and the film alternates between their visual and philosophical points-of-view. Elwood’s goal at Nickel is to follow the rules and expose injustice. Turner’s is to make it out alive by any means necessary.

Because there is no omniscient narrator or camera eye, the film requires some work for the viewer. First, one must infer whose point-of view she is watching, then toggle between the two different perspectives. The result is groundbreaking — the movie equivalent of experiencing the developing consciousness of Stephen Dedalus, James Joyce’s literary alter ego in “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Like Joyce’s landmark novel, “Nickel Boys,” the movie, is not a tale told but an experience felt.

As it is Turner’s second confinement at Nickel, he has no illusions about the institution’s professed goals of reforming wayward youths. Nickel is organized along the lines of a 20^th-century plantation. Black prisoners work in the fields and white ones play football. (The Black youth are permitted to wrestle on their day of rest, if they take a fall to their white opponent in the annual Nickel wrestling match.) Some internees, including Turner, sell provisions earmarked for Black prisoners to local restaurants and enrich Nickel administrators.

Intervening to protect a young boy roughed up by an elder one, Elwood is brutalized and whipped so harshly by staff in the “White House” that he lands in the infirmary. There, Turner firmly instructs, “No Lone Ranger shit.” Nickel’s purpose is punishment and fear of punishment, two tools used to control Blacks during Jim Crow. The White House is for whipping. Even worse, Turner warns, is the Sweat Box, from which some boys never return.

In the hope that the state of Florida will bring justice to Nickel, Elwood keeps a notebook itemizing the various criminal practices at the institution. In the hope that Elwood can leave Nickel without further punishment, or worse, Turner attempts to refocus his friend.

During the film’s second half, flash-forwards signal that, in time, the horrific crimes perpetrated at Nickel are brought to light. At first, we don’t know if Elwood or Turner survived, or if they were involved in exposing the truth. Only when we learn their surprising fates do we see how hope and activism are partners of social change.