How often does a film adaptation do justice to its source material?
If you are a dedicated reader and equally dedicated moviegoer, you know the answer to this question: seldom. Time after time, we scramble to choose a hill to die on—the book or the film—and this tug-of-war spills over into heated debates. We have seen famous adaptation tussles over literary treasures like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Little Women, The Great Gatsby or The Chronicles of Narnia, to name a few. Any adaptation puts its director in the hot seat.
The very premise of translating prose to picture almost seems doomed to fail—the kind of work you avoid unless you are sure of your artistic capabilities as a filmmaker or the thickness of your skin. Is it possible to capture a well-received book’s power without diluting it entirely?
With his film “Nickel Boys” (2024), director RaMell Ross passes the adaptation test. Drawing from Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel of the same name (which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize), Ross, who previously earned an Oscar nomination for his 2018 documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” preserves Whitehead’s critically acclaimed narrative style while adding cinematic texture that enhances key details of the book.
Like Whitehead, Ross oscillates in his storytelling between past and present, and between the perspectives of Elwood Curtis and Jack Turner, the novel’s two main characters. By attempting this pioneering feat of storytelling, Ross directs the movie in the enigmatic style of Whitehead’s masterful book. On this criterion alone, it was my favorite film of 2024.
I recommend seeing “Nickel Boys” in theaters while you can. The movie debuted on Dec. 12, and comes to streaming services in April of 2025, but a theater viewing demonstrates how daring cinematographer Jomo Fray’s choices really are. Fray received the award for Best Cinematography at the National Society of Film Critics Awards and has since been nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography for his work on “Nickel Boys.”
Collaborating with Ross on a meticulously planned 33-page shot list, Fray designed the film in a first-person style through point-of-view shots between Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson). Each actor wears a body-mounted camera in separate shots to communicate the sense of speaking directly to another person. Whenever any of the actors in the film speak to the camera, they are speaking to either Elwood or Turner—and an audience member has to do the mental work of distinguishing which is which.
Because “Nickel Boys” explicitly addresses us as viewers, our role extends far beyond that of the detached spectator. Instead, we literally become Elwood or Turner at a given plot point. We are spoken to, gazed at, teased, chastised and forgiven. This is one of the first “mainstream” movies to fully exploit this point-of-view format, and it’s a cinematic feat.
My favorite first-person shots are early on in the film, as Elwood’s doting grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) lovingly ushers him through the colors, textures, smells and sounds of childhood. From a child’s height, the camera gazes at garden games, parties and glittery Christmas decorations. Bed sheets are fluffed high above our heads. Giggles ring out in the kitchen as Elwood’s grandmother prepares breakfast for the two of them. Red, yellow and orange hues fill the screen.
Only briefly do we see the reflection of a young Elwood in a steam iron and in the window of an electronics shop broadcasting Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the March on Washington in 1963. Though we hardly know what Elwood looks like, we know what he looks at. We see what he sees, and in this way, we do know him, perhaps more intimately than we ever could by looking at him through our own eyes.
Elwood’s mild, loving childhood casts a ray of light against the film’s dark setting. “Nickel Boys” takes place in the early 1960s in Jim Crow-era Florida, in a country overshadowed by racism and daily violence. The plot’s early levity quickly comes to an end when Elwood’s luminous childhood transitions into a precocious adolescence. Elwood excels in his studies and is recognized by a high school teacher as an outstanding candidate for college, but he accidentally hitches a ride in a stolen car on the way to his first college class. For this, he is arrested and sent to Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school that uses concealed corporal punishment against its Black students.
Nickel Academy is based on the real-life Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, which was run by the state of Florida and closed in 2011. Nearly 80 unmarked graves have been discovered at Dozier. Researchers from the University of South Florida have uncovered historical records indicating that nearly 100 boys ages 6 to 18 died at Dozier between 1900 and 1973. Overall, there were more Black children than white children who died there—and among those, the Black children tended to be younger in age.
In contrast to the red, yellow and orange hues of Elwood’s life at home with his grandmother, Nickel is portrayed in blues, greys and shadowy blacks. An unexpected, buttery beam of sunlight shines across Elwood’s surroundings when he meets Jack Turner, his dramatic foil with a cynical view of human nature. Elwood is logical and optimistic; Turner is doubtful and hard. Their unexpected bond helps them survive violence and psychological torture, but all the while, there is a pervasive sense that Nickel will change these boys forever.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, RaMell Ross described his use of what he calls the “sentient perspective” to convey Elwood and Turner’s view of their world. The cinematographer Jomo Fray expanded on this idea as an attempt “to let us as viewers live life concurrently with Elwood and Turner, to be in their same present moment, to be inside their body.” For Ross, the ultimate challenge was to inhabit the minds of the boys in order to experience the world as they do, from life at Nickel to the textures of their friendship and the psychological impact of their trauma: “What if Turner or Elwood [ . . . ] had a camera like an organ attached to their eyes the entire time? How would they move it? What would it look like? What would they see?”
Rarely does a film reach the level of artistic fidelity and innovation that “Nickel Boys” achieves. Ross and Fray’s collaboration has birthed a visual masterpiece that complements Whitehead’s narrative genius, giving audiences an immersive look at a story that demands reckoning and reflection. This is not just an adaptation—it’s a new chapter in cinematic storytelling and a testament to the enduring strength of stories that demand to be told and remembered.
