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This week at The Tryon Theatre is “Nickel Boys” (Ross 2024), an adaptation of the 2019 novel The Nickel Boys, written by Colson Whitehead. This novel received broad acclaim, winning the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, heralded for the unwavering light it shone upon the abuses at the real-life Arthur G Dozier School for Boys. This institution, otherwise known as The Florida School for Boys, was a reform academy in Marianna, Florida. This school endured a 111-year legacy before an investigation uncovered the dark truth of its dehumanizing practices. 

The film closely adapts the novel and similarly premiered to universal praise, winning numerous accolades, including nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2025 Academy Awards. At the center of the narrative is a young African American man, Elwood Curtis. His story starts in 1962, his future full of promise and hope, with academics and optimistic morals as his primary concerns. A poorly timed encounter and the racism of the Jim Crow Era south soon find Elwood at odds with the law, punished to residency at The Nickel School (the name at the time for the Florida School for Boys). 

Like the southern society of the time, the internal operations of The Nickel School segregated white and black students, with two painfully disparate systems of treatment employed in this racial divide. Inside this pressure cooker of despair, Elwood finds connection and camaraderie with a fellow “inmate,” Turner. While these two teenagers differ in life philosophy, they form a deep bond of friendship and shared endurance against the brutality of their conditions. 

The film explores this time in The Nickel School, as well as this bright spark of mutual empathy, with an earnest and loving passion. However, there is no sugar coating the pain of Elwood and Turner’s experience, and the film does not flinch from witnessing it as a sad testimony to their fortitude. 

“Nickel Boys” employs a unique cinematic approach to portraying the alternating first-person narratives of Elwood and Turner. The film is told through point-of-view shots, with the camera itself interacted with by others as a character, effectively placing the viewer directly into the experience of its protagonists. Naturally, this stylistic novelty can prove initially jarring, but the immersive quality of it quickly sets into a comfortable rhythm. 

Emotionally, this film is mature and heavy, a powerful and painful watch that tells a searingly authentic story, with characters who will inevitably take up residence in your heart. Ignoring their suffering is an impossible task. Any viewer should certainly expect to feel sad but will be artistically rewarded for this price of feeling. The film’s stellar reception is one reflected by critics and audiences alike, a digestible and rewarding cinematic undertaking. We hope you will share this admittedly sad but phenomenally compelling film with us soon!