Pop Culture Happy Hour - Nickel Boys

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

Adapted from the Pulitzer prize-winner novel from Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys tells the story of two Black boys who form an unshakeable bond at a segregated reform school in the Jim Crow South. It's quite ambitious and unlike other prestigious book to film adaptations you've probably seen — most of it unfolds in the first-person perspective. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Colson Whitehead's novel The Nickel Boys won a Pulitzer Prize a few years ago, and now it's been adapted into an astonishing drama for the screen. It tells the story of two black boys who form an unshakable bond at a segregated reform school in the Jim Crow South. It's quite ambitious and unlike other prestigious book-to-film adaptations you've probably seen. Most of it unfolds in the first-person perspective. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Aisha Harris.

And today we're talking about Nickel Boys on pop culture, Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is NPR producer Mark Rivers. Hey, Mark, welcome back. Hey, I said thanks for having me. Great to have you here. So in Nickel Boys, Elwood is a black teenager growing up in Tallahassee, Florida in the 1960s. He's played by Ethan Horacee. Elwood has a chance to get a better education at a nearby technical college, but those dreams are dashed when he's falsely accused of being an accomplice to a crime. As punishment, he's ordered away to a

segregated reform school, Nickel Academy. There he befriends Turner, a swaggering kid from Houston, who's already resigned to the realities of racism and inequality. He's played by Brendan Wilson. Now, the movie depicts their friendship, but it also depicts the inhospitable conditions of the Academy, which is based on a real reformatory, the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Mariana, Florida. Between 1900 and 1973, nearly 100 boys died at the school, and it closed finally in 2011. Nickel Boys was directed and co-written by Ramel Ross, who also made the Oscar-nominated documentary Hale County this morning this evening. I highly recommend people check that out if they haven't already. And we should note, Nickel Boys is being released by Amazon NGM Studios.

So, Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. The movie is in theaters now. Linda, I'm going to start with you. What did you make of this film? Yeah, I really enjoyed this. I mean, enjoy is a weird word. It's obviously a very sad and trauma-filled story. But I think formally in terms of how it's shot, which we mentioned in the intro a little bit,

I really admired the way that I think this very unusual POV technique was used to convey, like, genuine elements of the story. And I think at the beginning when I was watching it, it was distracting to me, which is partly because it's just, unusual, right? That's not necessarily about it's good or it's bad. It's just it's not the way they usually shoot movies that are going to be, you know, a big Oscar play or whatever. Yeah. But I did ultimately feel like there were good reasons why it was done the way it was done and it ultimately felt very intentional as opposed to feeling, you know, to me, unusual for unusual's sake. I think there are reasons why it was done this way. And I think that this kind of fascinating way of making this film really worked very well for me. Yeah, yeah. I feel the same way. Mark, I'm curious. What are

your thoughts on this? Yeah, fascinating to say the least. So I just say from the outset, I saw this movie way back in early October once. And this is not on the list of movies you want to have only seen once and talk about months later and do an in-depth conversation. But I'll do my best. This was my most anticipated movie of the year. I was a big fan of the book, big fan of Coulson Whitehead. I'm an even bigger fan of the last Whitehead adaptation of the Underground Railroad from Barry. Jenkins. I think I'm on the record saying that I think that's one of the greatest things ever made for a TV screen. So if Nickel Boys is going to be even half as good as Railroad, I was going to be in for a treat. I think ultimately, I admire this movie without loving it. I think one thing that connects it to Railroad for me is that, like you said, Linda, this is a very ambitious work of adaptation. This is not a copy and paste job. This is not some kind of pandering to the fans of the book. This is a complete reimagining. The Nickel Boys book is a prose is very terse, you know, almost sky. Gapel sharp, very declarative, it almost reads as nonfiction. And this movie, through the use of the first person perspective, is more elusive, more elusive, too.

And he kind of interweaves archival footage as well. And on the surface, it creates what should be a more expansive vision, I think. But the perspective that's supposed to immerse you into the feelings and trials of the main character, for me, it did feel like a bit of a distraction. I felt like I was very focused on how Ramele Ross was telling the story and not the effects of the story. like the feelings of the characters. I was always aware of what he was doing and how he wanted to do it. It took me out of the movie a lot.

It seemed like, Linda, you mentioned intent. And I think I was more preoccupied or focused on the intent of what Ross was doing rather than what was actually happening. It was a very experimental work. But it did create a kind of a distancing effect for me at times. And yeah, I wanted to kind of be brought in more than I was.

I wonder whether the second time you see it knowing what the technique is and knowing what it's going to feel like, I wonder whether that will continue to be the case or not. I just think it's a super interesting question. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I went in not knowing that it was going to be the – I saw the trailer, but I didn't think it was going to be the entire movie.

And it did – it did take me a while to adjust, and maybe I just never fully did. Based on now talking to you both and also other conversations I've had with people who have seen this, it does seem like the type of movie that will be an acquired taste. And I came down as loving it, but also having some of the same sort of small little trip-ups that you both did in terms of sometimes feeling a little bit outside of what was supposed to be a very immersive experience. I've also only seen this, had a chance to see this once. I do think the second time will be different. But I did feel as though, at least in some of the earlier scenes with Elwood when we're in his perspective, because it jumps between his perspective and Turner's perspective. Some of the earlier scenes, it did kind of feel as though I was watching a screen test where you have like a reader who's off screen and then the actor sort of reacting on screen.

And I had to ask myself, you know, was this just me getting used to what was happening in the film? Because over time that completely dissipated. But then I also wonder like, well, maybe there is something like it is so ambitious that like maybe not everything is going to work in the same way. Maybe it's just the way that person delivers the line or the way that it's the moment that's happening. Maybe it's not as effective, perhaps, as other parts of the movie. So I think I'm kind of torn between those two things. Regardless of that, I think it's a movie, just like Hale County this morning, this evening. It teaches you how to watch it over time.

And once you've kind of learned how to watch it and learned what is happening, for me, at least it was hard to resist what was going on. And like I was invested in the story. The choice to put this in first person perspective to me, like when I think about period pieces and often period pieces where we've seen sort of these stories before, we've seen plenty of movies that are set in the Jim Crow South. We've seen stories about injustices and the civil rights movement and backdrops of the civil rights movement. You know, you watch those movies and no matter how well-crafted they are, you can still feel like out of remove, like you're watching something from the past.

And you can feel for it. You can be moved by it. But I think choosing to make this such a, you are in this world, you are part of this story and choosing to bring us into the story, I think, for me at least, was really effective. Like, I think it sort of collapsed the space between, like, watching a period piece and being moved by it in a way. I'm not sure if you, does that make sense. Like, is that something you felt? Yeah. It does.

I mean, I think that was also on Ross's mind, too. One of the movies at the movie, one of the other. films or text that Nicol Boys explicitly references is the Defiant One, the Stanley Kramer film in 1958. This is a movie essentially kind of designed to make white folks feel better about themselves. As far as race relations, racial reconciliation, James Baldwin notably skewered this film in his book, The Double Fines' work. I think what makes this movie really fascinating beyond that is that the movie is almost

a commentary on itself. It's not only about what is happening, but it's about how. how you choose to depict what is happening. This movie really reminded me of a number of films that are about how do you grapple with trauma? I thought of the zone of interest from last year where all the literal violence is ambient. You know, in the background, I thought this other Holocaust film The Son of Saul where you're taking inside a Nazi camp. But while sonically things are overwhelming, visually things are blurred and indistinct or kind of focused in close-up on the character. I thought of the documentary The Missing Picture, which takes the Cambodian.

And theodian genocide, but depicts it through claymation tableau. And what connects all these movies together is these artists are trying to think of ways to depict their trauma without depicting the trauma. Yes. Or beyond that, when I'm depicting the trauma, what do I convey by showing the trauma? Yeah. And I wonder or worry with this movie whether Rommel Ross, who clearly deeply thought about this, maybe overthought it. Reading the book, I thought, oh, I wouldn't last one minute in this school. Somehow, coming out of the movie, I thought, maybe I would have made it.

Because I just because I think some of the impact of the violence there, it was kind of so abstracted, kind of so not evasive, but we're focusing on something else. We're focusing on the sound of a whirring fan. We're showing kind of up close digitalizations of bodies being recovered from the graves of this up from where the school was. And it's impressions of the trauma, but is it the actual trauma itself? And I'm wondering if maybe by kind of kind of moving. or working or scurting around it, that he kind of blunted the impact of what he was doing. I found it fascinating to kind of think about what the POV in this movie is doing, right? Because on the one hand, yes, it's absolutely, it's taking you kind of into the world of the character.

That's obviously part of it. What I was fascinated by is that when I think about form, one of the many things that I go back to is the YouTube series, Every Frame of Pain of Painting, which is a series of video essays. They're really wonderful. I really recommend them. And it went into sort of hiatus for like eight years and just recently came back and started putting up new essays. But one of the essays is about the documentary, The Impostor, and it's called Looking Into the Lens. And he talks about how having somebody look directly into the lens, usually in the center of the frame, not always, has this very specific function in movies like it's done in Zodiac.

It's done in Silence of the Lambs quite a bit. They didn't talk about this one in the essay, but you can see an enraging ball. You can see it in other places. And obviously, at the very end of psycho, right? There's that moment where you get that very creepy shot of Norman Bates looking into the camera. And what that made me think about was those things are not usually about putting you in sympathy with the character whose seat you're sitting in. They're about you, the viewer, being addressed by the character. Yeah. And I think in this, much more emphatically, the camera is standing in for the character. And if you see them talk about how they shot this, they had the actors wearing camera rigs in order to shoot it the way they did, which makes sense. I mean, you would think that they would. Yeah. I mean, it's not that it isn't horrifying, but it's not a horror movie in this way.

In a non-horror movie setting, the different use of that straight on a dress. Because to me, the moment when I really felt like I understood the value of this technique in this story is the first time. You spend a good part of this movie only seeing through Elwood's eyes, right? Yeah. And then there's this moment where you realize, wait, I'm seeing from another person's perspective and I'm seeing him. I'm seeing this character who for the most part has been invisible to me because I've been inside his head looking out at the world. It is one of the really striking moments in the film when the perspective sips for the first time from Elwood, the main character to Turner, the friend that he meets in the school. Because the way I experienced it, it's like you've been this character for a certain amount of runtime.

You've been seeing what he sees. You've been feeling what he's feeling or trying to feel what he feels. And then when it flips, it was almost like you're looking at yourself. The movie almost makes it feel like you've now just seen yourself for the first time. In addition to Turner seeing yourself, it was one of the moments where I felt his technique was working to kind of make you to really put you inside of this person's headspace. Yeah, I was definitely struck by that moment also. That moment was striking, but I think for me, when I saw sort of the full, I felt as though Ross's ambitions were being like reaching their apex is a moment where we're in Turner's perspective. Elwood's Nana, his grandmother, who's played by Anginoe Ellis Taylor, she arrives there to try and visit and see Elwood, but they will not let him go to see her.

We won't talk about why, but she's unable to see him, but she runs into Turner. And so this is the first time she's meeting Turner. The way Ellis Taylor plays this moment, it's heartbreaking, but it's also warm. There's a way that she's looking directly at you, aka Turner, and she's just like using you as the proxy. She's like, you're the next best. Like, I can't see my grandson, but you're here. Can I hug you? Oh, my goodness.

Like, that moment, and it speaks to sort of what you're talking about of, like, seeing yourself. Because in a way, your Turner, you've already seen Elwood, but also now you are seeing how his nana looks at him. And the way she, like, transfers that energy onto this man. She's, like, this boy, she's just met. That, I think, is one of the ways that I think, again, like, Ross is really, trying to look at a different way of looking at these characters and how we see, especially black characters. And really, it's not just about all these bigger things. It's about these small

moments that you have while you're dealing with the other bigger things that try to break you down. And I think that scene is just so excellent and perfect. And you also sense, like, you understand, just from like small subtle shifts of the camera, like how Turner is responding to it. It's just really, really lovely. That for me was sort of one of the standout moments. And Ellis Taylor is just like, she's one of those actresses who, anytime she's in a role, she's going to commit. You know, you've seen her in origin. She was in, I don't know.

I think casting her as his nana is just like so perfect there. I'm always pro-angely Alice. She's almost a kind of a cheat code for your film to have real emotional weight. Like she just automatically brings it. But I also had some ambivalence towards the performances as well. They felt a little, maybe it's because of the way he shot it. But like, how did you guys feel about the performances? Because sometimes they felt a little bit stilted almost because there's this idea of a dress or this thing that's happening where they are addressing the camera directly.

I was missing the interaction between two bodies in a space. I was missing that part of what movies can offer. I get that. And it felt like they were just kind of monologuing towards us and not really being in. the actual space. There's almost an installation-esque vibe to some of it. I can imagine sequences from this movie playing it like the Whitney or the Hirschor Museum, almost. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out, I think part of what Mark is wrestling with,

which is the idea of artifice, right? And the difference between artifice and just what you're not used to, which are not exactly the same thing. And I thought about this a lot because I had the same reaction. And like, it wasn't as if this felt like, you know, I, oh, I sunk into this. I mean, eventually I stopped thinking about the technique nearly as much. But it's not, I absolutely understand receiving this as something that is kind of whatever the neutral version of ostentatious is, like that it's conspicuous. That's what I'm trying to say.

The technique is conspicuous. Yeah. But if I were used to it, would it be any more conspicuous than, you know, I thought about like conclave, which is a movie that I liked. but it is not a naturalistic movie by any stretch of the imagination. He loves all these shots of like a whole little mob of Cardinals with umbrellas being washed toward the steps or whatever it is. He loves those shots and those are also contrived. And they also make you think about he's just showing off. Like this is spectacle, right?

Yeah, but I think audiences, the general movie audience is used to that sort of. Right, exactly. Spectacle. And this is not, this is more of perhaps if you're, You've watched a lot of international films and you've gone to film school. Like, maybe this is something. And I don't mean, look, I am someone who went to film school. So, like, I'm not trying to say that this is like.

I don't think it's gimmicky. Like, I definitely would not call it. It's not gimmicky. But I do think it's the type of film that, like, a lot of people who are going to see this film and perhaps have never seen Ross's previous film will be scratching their heads, like, what is this, you know? And, you know, I hinted at it earlier, but I did have that same reaction that you did, Mark, of like some of this feels stilted.

Like it was having the opposite effect of what I think the entire movie wants you to have by the end of it, which is being immersed in it. And I did feel as though there was a separation here. But I think once we got to the school, that was when it really started to click for me. And again, it could have been me just getting used to it or it could have just been like maybe those scenes weren't as clean or immersive or kind of melting away the artifice in a way that the later scenes do. I do think maybe we should spend a little bit of time talking about the end of this film because there's a lot to unpack there. We're going to get into spoiler territory.

So if you have not seen the film and want to go in completely blind. And have not read the book. And not have read the book. You've been warned. So we're getting a lot of over the shoulder shots. And eventually we learn that we are seeing adult Elwood, although we're only seeing adult Elwood from behind. Eventually, it is revealed. that Elwood is not Elwood. He is Turner. And when they were at Nicole Academy, Elwood and Turner attempted to escape and run away, and Elwood was killed. And basically, Turner assumed, was able to get away and assumed Elwood's identity. It seems as though his, or Elwood's Nana was okay with that because we see a scene of them

embracing him telling her what happened. adult Elwood is played by Davy Diggs, who I think most people are familiar with from Hamilton, various other roles. There's also, like, I'm a sucker for montages, but that montage just like really hit me because it really just tied everything together for me. But I'm curious, you know, how did that land for you? Mark, I'm actually curious for you because you've read the book. How did that feel for you? Yeah, so I'll say, you know, in comparison to Whitehead's other books, Nickel Boys, the prose is more refined and, and restrained. The Elwood character, to set him up a little bit, he's this idealist, right? He listens

to a record of Martin Luther King's speeches, you know, like almost on loop. And he believes in justice, he believes in the kind of moral arc of the universe bending towards justice, if you will, while Turner is the more cynical character. And you're reading this book that really comes off as pretty cynical, or the tone comes off as cynical and cutting. And you're wondering, how could this be the Elwood that we've been following? Like, how could this be his voice? And the twist happens and you realize who is actually the voice of the story, it really does hit you and it really ties everything together. Now, watching the movie, like, you know right away that this is David Diggs, like just from like his hair and like his skin color. Well, did you know he was in it?

Because I had forgotten that he was in it. So like, that might be. Maybe I should have just not known that going in. But I, but voice to me is pretty distinctive and also his hair is very distinctive. I was going to say, I would have believed it was any variety of people from back of his head and hair. I did start at some point, and you don't hear him talk a ton, but you hear him talk particularly in one scene with another guy who attended Nickel Academy. It is true that when I heard his voice, there was a little part of me that was like, but I didn't know it was until the very end. So I kind of knew pretty early on, and also the Elwood character in the movie is very, you know, comparatively very dark skin compared to V-Diggs.

I think if you do know it's to V-Diggs from the beginning, the twist is not going to land with as much force. Yeah. I did have the thought of like, I hope they're not going to try to tell me that that kid grew up to me. Right, right, right. That's going to be a little flimsy. I appreciated the interesting thing he's doing with the kind of third,

kind of behind the shoulder point of view to where you're at once in the big space, but you're also kind of disembodied from him. Right. It's not the same as the rest of it. It's not the same as the first person perspective. You're kind of, you're at once a part of his world, but also there's a distancing to it. And I think that's a really smart metaphor

for what kind of living what trauma can feel like where you're both once kind of a part of your body and you're in this space, but you're not really a part of your body. There's a detachment to it. Yeah, yeah. And that, again, this we're talking like just for Ross's ambitions with form, right?

But as far as what was actually happening, you don't get to know this guy. I didn't get to know this guy in adulthood really that well. You had the one conversation with the other person who survived that Nickel Boys from Academy, but I just, I don't think I really got to know who this person was in adulthood and didn't really care that much who this person was in adulthood because the movie seemed to be kind of just setting up what the twist was going to be. Or like those portions seem to be more so setting up what the twist was going to be rather than let's really get to know who this person is in this current moment.

I think that's interesting because, you know, we were talking about earlier this idea of like a verdict. the trauma in a way. And I do think this is another way in which the movie doesn't, like, it doesn't really, like, double down on trauma in the way that we're used to seeing. No. We don't necessarily know how this has affected him in adulthood. That didn't bother me, but I could also see why you would want more. But then I was also like, is this perhaps Elwood, like the spirit of Elwood, like watching as Turner goes on with his, like, like, like, like, Like maybe a ghostly or like, you know, that kind of thing that was, maybe it can be interpreted both ways. But I kind of saw it as like perhaps this is also like a literal like ghost or soul of some sort who's just like kind of always there watching Turner as Elwood in like a, I don't want to say comforting way.

But in like a just like I'm still here kind of way. I think that's fascinating to think about. I think the possibility that the over the shoulder shot is the Elwood POV. Very optimistic. I think it's very optimistic. You know, I'm not a big authorial intent guy, so it doesn't necessarily matter to me whether that's the intent. I think that can be an interesting way to think about it also. I agree with you, Mark, that you don't get to know adult L. Wood slash Turner a lot.

And I think that's partly because the focus during the film is on kind of giving you just enough of this experience. There's a, I wanted to mention there's a kid named Griff who's a boxer who is played by Luke Tenney who's on shrinking. My like current maybe favorite show. Yeah, I was a side note. I was like, how old is this guy? He seems to be playing significantly younger in Nickel Boys than he is playing on shrinking, although in both maybe it's a little elastic. But anyway, I really liked the way that that character, what that character did for me was underscore that there were. were always just other guys kind of on the, not their best, best friends, right, but other guys

that they would get to know who were kind of on the fringes of this experience. And I almost feel like having those guys there made it possible for me when I saw adult Elwood slash Turner to kind of think about what they would be thinking about, right? And you get, we haven't even really talked about the extensive use of archival photos and footage in a way that sometimes is very on the nose and sometimes is very kind of impressionistic to me. You get a sense of how L. Wood slash Turner is thinking about this story, partly from the archival footage, right, that he's got all of that history kind of tumbling around in his brain. There's a sequence when you see there's kind of footage of the moon landing. And I think the kind of exposition

is kind of pretty clear there where you have the kind of ambitions of the country at large the heights that the country would reach weighed against the limitations of Jim Crow America and all the ways that we are not being morally ambitious, but we're being technologically ambitious. And I'm glad that you mentioned Griff because I think that's one of the more effective sequences when he's kind of forced a box of white student at the school. And it reminded me of a great sequence and invisible man that kind of has the same nightmarish quality where these boys had to kind of box for the pleasure of drunken white people. And I think what you're getting at, too, Linda, is that even though he's, even though

Griff is not a main character, you don't forget him. You know, you don't forget his face. Right. And I think that was one effective example of Ross kind of helping you understand what this person is dealing with without showing you directly the scars and the wounds. But you see very clearly this is a tragedy. And I think the other thing about Griff is that because the, this story is inspired by a real school and a real school where, you know, the big kind of shock

that hit people was the discovery of the remains of a lot, a lot, a lot of students who had died there. I think it's important to illustrate kind of a student who, other than Elwood, would have ended up being part of that collection of students where their remains were found on the ground. of the school. I think more than anything, the movie acts, just in the same way that the Underground Railroad,

to me, acts as this. It's a kind of moral and artistic corrective. It's a kind of tribute to stories that haven't been told in Hollywood.

It's a tribute to characters that we've never seen on screen quite this way. That's a big undertaking for a movie to take. And I think watching

the movie, more than anything, I am just aware of the burden of that undertaking, of what it means to tell this story and tell the story in this way and force many or what I hope to be.

I do want people to see this movie because I think it'll be a great conversation piece. It will force a lot of people who maybe do not know this story well to be confronted with, to be confronted with the story. And confronted with the story in a way that they will not expect and will have them thinking for a while. Yeah. Yeah. I'm never going to be sad to see formal ambition in a movie that kind of has a big, a big-ish, at least kind of conventional, push behind it, this level of formal ambition. Yeah. Well, obviously, we all had a lot to talk about. And as Mark said, we hope you go see it. It is a movie that will make you think and hopefully make you feel it made me feel a lot of things. So once you have a chance to check it out,

tell us what you think about Nickel Boys. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCH and on letterboxed at letterbox.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show, Linda Holmes, Mark Rivers. Thanks so much for being here. This was a very stimulating conversation. Thank you. I think we could have kept this going for even longer. I'll see you all tomorrow. Yes. Thanks for having me, yes. Well, this episode was produced by Hufza Fatima and edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katzif, and Hello, Kamin provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.

Thank you.