The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys — also known as the Florida School for Boys — was a state-run reform school in Marianna, Florida. Housing troubled youths for the state, the school became known as a place of abuse and torture.
Since its opening in 1900, hundreds of survivors have come forward, citing incidents of beatings, sexual abuse by staff, whippings, students being forced to work “in the fields” and being shot to death or killed by blunt force trauma. Boys as young as 5 years old were sent for offenses as petty as running away from home. Because of Jim Crow laws, Dozier was segregated, allowing for Black students to be abused for reasons as frivolous as talking to whites. Between 1900 and 1973, close to 100 boys were killed in Dozier and put in unmarked graves.
It only closed down in 2011.
While reparations were made, including a state apology in 2017 and a compensation bill in 2024, the horror of the Dozier School for Boys is a place that author Colson Whitehead doesn’t want anyone to forget. Basing his fictional Nickel Academy on the infamous school, Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Nickel Boys,” highlights the lingering trauma of racism, abuse and death that plagues two Black teens that go to the school in 1960s Florida and are stuck remembering 50 years later.
And now, as America is reckoning with its inherent racism, it makes sense for the novel to be turned into a movie. The question then becomes a matter of how exactly a film can effectively communicate the atrocity, the despair that comes with such subject matter. For director RaMell Ross, the answer is to force the audience to be in the character’s shoes.
For the first third of “Nickel Boys,” Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is played by a camera. Shot in first perspective, everything that is seen is seen through Elwood. Lying down in his backyard and twirling a leaf between his fingers. Seeing his mother Hattie’s (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) friends play cards. Looking into a store window to watch TV coverage of Martin Luther King Jr. giving a speech after the Selma march.
Cinematographer Jomo Fray brings an atmosphere to this concept, attaching a Malick-esque, abstract aesthetic of poetic nature to juxtapose the harsh reality of growing up Black in 1960s Florida. It matches perfectly with Elwood, who has the optimistic hope that the civil rights movement will prevail before being shipped off to a place that was made to crush any aspiration as such to dust.
From there, Nickel Academy serves as a microcosm of the America Elwood has to face. If he goes against the ways of his white faculty and teachers, he is taken to a shed in the middle of the night where he will be given numerous lashes and a week in the school’s hospital. If he wants to be “reformed” in their eyes, he has to work all day in orange tree farms with nothing to show for it. If he wants to leave, he just needs to hope he can make it to 18.
The only solace he finds in this hopeless situation is his newfound friend, Turner (Brandon Wilson), a more cynical student who connects with Elwood’s determination to escape. From here the perspective shifts; suddenly the world is seen from the eyes of Elwood as well as Turner, going back and forth between the two indiscriminately.
It is at this point that a directorial choice evolves into something profound. At first a style that works well in establishing character, albeit with a forced beauty that gives way to artificiality, the perspective instead transforms into expressing a collective struggle. The indeterminable editing provides a connection between the duo, which is where Ross elevates this film.
Having only directed the intimate documentary “Hale County, This Morning, This Evening,” Ross adds a human touch that is much needed in such a depressing story. Not only do Herisse and Wilson give exceptional performances, but their characters’ friendship shows a sweetness to their dynamic that makes this dire setting palatable and all the more tragic.
“Nickel Boys” takes a sharp contrast to other films of its kind, walking a dangerous tightrope in accidentally becoming yet another film full of Black trauma ala “Antebellum” and “12 Years a Slave.” It even shares the same function as last year’s “The Zone of Interest,” where it must show a unique perspective on a well worn topic in film. But whereas “The Zone of Interest” depicts a disturbingly apathetic take on fascism, “Nickel Boys” is sympathetic with its methods. Ross focuses on the side of the survivors, giving them the respect they deserve. Even when it occasionally cuts to an older Elwood (Daveed Diggs) debating to testify as reports of the school’s abuse come to light, it portrays his trauma and detachment in such an appropriate way that it’s quietly devastating.
But beneath the sensitive touch is a critical eye. Anytime a scene where Elwood is abused occurs, the film adverts its gaze to an even worse sight. It cuts to photos of real-life Dozier students, or of newspapers praising Nickel for helping the community. The most daunting is archival footage of the Space Race, both a visual metaphor for the escape that Elwood desires and a symbol of idealistic progress contrasting the suffering the country perpetuates at the same time. The message is made clear: The ideal is that Black kids remain in blurred backgrounds or unmarked graves as America achieves greatness.
“Nickel Boys” understands this, mourning the loss of those that history desperately wanted to forget — the ones who were horribly murdered and the ones who had to witness all of it. As much as the humanistic perspective wants the audience to empathize, it also confronts. The film forces those to engage with the subject matter, to realize how deeply horrific it is that places like Dozier were allowed to do this for over a century.
By being a thoughtful and astounding work, the film continues to do what Whitehead wanted, enabling a reckoning with American history and to demand that no one forget what the Florida School for Boys did. Because the most disturbing factor to take away from this is the possibility that somewhere out there is a school like Dozier that is still open.
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