“Nickel Boys” director defends the film's unique style: It 'elicits a subjective response from every person'

Many novels portray their worlds entirely through the perspective of their protagonists. All that readers know about the reality of the story is what the main character sees, feels, hears, and thinks about. This can make film adaptations tricky, because movies usually have to show more of the characters’ surroundings, just by the nature of the format.

But in Nickel Boys, the new film adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel, director RaMell Ross places viewers directly into the perspectives of Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), two young Black boys sent to the titular “reform school” in ‘60s Florida. With the exception of a few shots, we see all of the events through their eyes.

Related: Why Colson Whitehead continues to plunge into American history's dark heart

In the behind-the-scenes video above, you can see how this worked on set. Wilson had to wear a camera rig strapped to his chest to film the scenes that take place from Turner’s perspective, and vice versa. The unique shooting style was a bit of an adjustment for the cast, which also includes Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Origin, King Richard) as Elwood’s grandmother Harriet.

“There's so much unlearning that everybody had to do,” Ross tells Entertainment Weekly. “But for me, it was just learning, because this was my first fiction feature. So I didn't overemphasize the film’s POV — it's written into the script, obviously, in every scene, but on the day it was just like, ‘All right, guys, the camera is the character and you need to look exactly right here.’ In hindsight from later conversations, I know it was a bit of a psychological game they had to play with themselves, but each of them turned that isolation and lack of connection into feeling for their character. It’s really, really beautiful. I guess that's what actors do, they figure out how to make it feel authentic.”

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Ross’ first film, 2018’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening, was a documentary about the residents of the titular Alabama county. He also deployed first-person POV there, to add a dreamy quality to his portrayal of real life. Combining that experimental approach with Whitehead’s gripping text (based on real-life reform schools and the bodies that were discovered and exhumed from their grounds decades later) was the challenge of Nickel Boys.

“The form of the film — the shooting technique and the editing — is a direct lift from Hale County This Morning, This Evening. The idea here was doing it inside a genuinely traditional narrative in which I could not make my own decisions about what to exclude and include,” Ross says. “But Hale County This Morning, This Evening was about a lack of clear narrative continuity, and this one needed it. That challenge elevated the imagery and the concept to be even more humanistic. The greatest gift is that Colson’s writing and clarity of structure, character, and intent is just so crystallized that you can distill it.”

Related: Colson Whitehead is now the most decorated writer of his generation. He's not slowing down

Some viewers walk out of Nickel Boys feeling transcendent, like they’ve seen a new possibility for how movies can work. For others, the unique POV detracts from the weight of the source material. You can see these divergent reactions in award season results so far, with Ross winning Best Director honors from the Gotham Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle, while not even being nominated in the category at the Golden Globes.

Ross, for his part, appreciates the different reactions that Nickel Boys produces. He just wants people to know that we don’t have to think of certain cinematic conventions as settled questions.

“Cinema is very, very young,” Ross says. “I know that a lot of folks who went into the movie a bit hesitant about the POV come out deeply moved. The film truly elicits a subjective response from each person. I'm very happy with the range of reactions from folks. I would invite them to watch it again, because I truly think that being able to let go of that hiccup and trying to enmesh your perception with the characters is just a gift. How often do we really get to do that?”

Nickel Boys is playing in limited release now in select cities.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly