In ‘Nickel Boys,’ Florida’s shame mirrors American apathy

First, the Florida of it all registers. Oranges, gators, crystal blue skies full of possibility.Then, something else dawns in the opening breaths of “Nickel Boys.” The film is shot in a first-person lens. We, the viewer, embody Elwood Curtis, an ambitious Black teen growing up in 1960s Tallahassee. He’s the one looking up at oranges, and by proxy, so are we.When someone is nice to Elwood, we receive that niceness as Elwood. When someone hurts Elwood, as many do, we hurt as Elwood. When Elwood realizes his skin is dark, which makes him a target in the Jim Crow South, we realize it. From plush theater recliners or the squishy comfort of a couch, we are faced with extreme eye contact and questions of our own complicity in the face of evil.“Nickel Boys” is a lush and essential reimagining of one of Florida’s most shameful chapters. I took in a Tampa screening of the film, directed by RaMell Ross and recently nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, eager to see the interpretation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Nickel Boys.”Whitehead drew inspiration from the work of former Tampa Bay Times reporters Ben Montgomery and Waveney Ann Moore and photographer Edmund Fountain, finalists for a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for their series For Their Own Good . At the center sits the real Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys near Marianna in the Panhandle. For more than a century, boys were sent to the reform school and forced into thinly veiled slavery under the state’s watch. Some boys endured horrific physical, mental and sexual abuse at the hands of administrators. The school was segregated for many years, with Black students often subject to worse treatment.The school closed in 2011; in 2024, the Florida Senate passed a bill to compensate victims . Shortly after the closure, University of South Florida researchers led by Erin Kimmerle began a yearslong effort of identifying remains in unmarked graves on the property, crystallizing the fact that many boys who walked into Dozier did not walk back out. Elwood, played by Ethan Herisse, is sent to the fictionalized version of Dozier after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the school, he meets a friend named Turner, played by Brandon Wilson. Together they unravel what’s going on around them and dream of escape.Director Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray expand and contract the visuals and the narrative, alternating between Elwood and Turner’s points of view. The story flashes into the future, where abused boys become traumatized men numbing out with addiction. It backs out to showcase the macro platter on which the plot is served: the Civil Rights Movement, the murders of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, the push for progress against odious tradition.Mirrors, car windows and storefronts become a theme. The reflective materials are vehicles to show facial expressions, yes, but I can’t help but think they’re also a message. This movie is a mirror to our world, our world right now, one rife with temptations to look away.And here’s the harsh reality, perhaps. “Nickel Boys” may be too challenging and complex, requiring too much patience to grab and shake those who need to see it most: The people convinced that Americans have magically entered a post-racial realm where our dastardly past does not need to be accounted for in classrooms and boardrooms. People who turn a blind eye to generations of systemic imbalance still skewing the playing field. People who support policies that encourage immigrant hunting in schools and churches, who seek to plunge the country into a pre-Reconstruction era. People who would prefer a nation where human rights dissolve along arbitrary geographical lines. In one scene, Elwood recovers from a beating after being punished for stopping a bully. The bright student who planned to go to college and become a Civil Rights leader begins to grasp the contagious apathy rooted around him.“If everybody looks the other way, then everybody’s in on it,” he says. “If I look the other way, I’m as implicated as the rest. It’s not how it’s supposed to be.”For weekly bonus content and a look inside columns by Stephanie Hayes, sign up for the free Stephinitely newsletter .

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