There’s a moment in Nickel Boys where Elwood stares directly at us. His eyes—wide, searching—hold something I recognize but don’t want to name. I sit there, gripping the armrest of my seat, suddenly aware of the weight in my chest. I know that look. I’ve seen it in my own sons.
Watching Nickel Boys as a Black mother is different. Watching it as a Black filmmaker is different. I don’t just see a beautifully crafted story—I see history pressing its fingers into the present. I see my sons in Elwood and Turner. I see the lies we tell ourselves about progress. And most of all, I see how RaMell Ross refuses to let us escape, how he forces us to sit in the truth, no matter how much we want to turn away.
A Story That Refuses to Look Away
The first time I read The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, I had to set it down. I knew it was based on real-life horrors at the Dozier School for Boys, a place that swallowed Black children whole under the guise of “reform.” But knowing and feeling are two different things. The book already hurt. So when I heard RaMell Ross was bringing it to the screen, I braced myself.Ross isn’t just any filmmaker. His lens is unflinching. I knew from Hale County This Morning, This Evening that he wasn’t going to hold our hands through history. He was going to make us feel it. And he did.
From the opening scene, I felt the weight of the film pressing down on me. It begins not in the past, but in the present—Elwood’s story unfolding as a memory, a wound he never outran. The cinematography is intimate, almost claustrophobic. The frame tightens around Elwood’s face, his hands, the space around him. I wasn’t just watching—I was with him, moving through the world as he did.
When we first meet young Elwood, he’s full of light. He’s the kind of boy every Black mother prays the world will see for who he truly is—bright, hopeful, good. I wanted to reach through the screen, warn him somehow. But I knew that was impossible.
Hope as a Weapon
Elwood believes in the promise of justice. He clings to Dr. King’s words like armor, repeating them to himself, using them to guide his choices. When he gets the opportunity to take college classes, I wanted to cheer. Here was a boy on the brink of something great.
And then, just like that, everything was stolen from him.
A simple ride in the wrong car. A moment of bad luck. That’s all it took.
I felt my stomach drop as the police lights flooded the screen, as Elwood—so sure of his innocence, so sure that justice would prevail—was yanked into the unforgiving machinery of the system. I knew what was coming. I still wasn’t ready.
Watching Nickel Boys as a Black mother was unbearable at times. Because I’ve raised Black boys. I know what it’s like to pour everything into them, to teach them that they are worthy, brilliant, capable—only to fear that the world will not see them the same way. I know what it’s like to pray that their goodness will protect them, even when history tells me otherwise.
The moment Elwood arrives at Nickel Academy, the cinematography shifts. Gone are the soft, hopeful tones of his early scenes. The light is harsher now, shadows stretching across his face. The school presents itself as a place of discipline, but we see the truth immediately: this is not a school. This is a prison.
The camera doesn't just show you. It makes you feel it. The way these boys tense up at the sound of footsteps, like they already know pain is coming. The bruises, dark and blooming under thin shirts, tell stories they’ll never say out loud. Their eyes stay down because looking too long, looking the wrong way, could mean the difference between making it to tomorrow or not. The violence ain’t just in the beatings—it’s in the air, soaked into the walls, stitched into the fabric of this place like it was always meant to be there.
Turner’s Truth
Then there’s Turner. If Elwood is a dreamer, Turner is a survivor. He sees the world for what it is, not what it should be. The contrast between them is devastating.
One of the most powerful choices in the film was how it handled their dynamic. Instead of leaning into clichés—Elwood as the pure-hearted hero, Turner as the jaded cynic—the film allows them both to be complex, full, human. Turner isn’t just cynical because he wants to be. He’s cynical because he’s had to be. Because boys who believe too much in justice end up dead.
There’s a scene where Turner tells Elwood, point blank, that there’s no getting out of Nickel Academy unscathed. “You want to believe you can win,” he says, “but that ain’t how the game works.”
I thought about my own sons then. About how I teach them to dream, to believe, to fight for what’s right. But do I also teach them how to survive? Do I prepare them for the Turner moments in life, when the world refuses to play fair?
The Unspoken Horrors
Ross makes the brilliant choice to let the worst horrors of Nickel Academy remain mostly unseen. We hear them, we see the aftermath, but we are not given the relief of turning the worst parts into spectacle.
This isn’t a film about trauma for the sake of trauma. It’s about survival. About the psychological toll of knowing that at any moment, you could be next.
One scene in particular wrecked me. The boys are woken in the middle of the night, one by one, their names called. Those who go do not always return. The camera stays on Elwood’s face, his breath shallow, his hands gripping the thin blanket as footsteps move closer. We never see what happens behind those doors. But we know. And that knowing is worse than any graphic depiction could be.
An Ending That Won’t Let Us Go
The final act of Nickel Boys is where the first-person perspective delivers its hardest punch. The way Ross structures the film—moving between past and present—lulls us into a sense of narrative expectation. We think we understand what happened.
And then, the reveal.
I won’t give it away, but let me tell you when it hit, it hit. Like the ground disappeared from under me, like the air got snatched out the room. Everything I thought I knew about the story shifted in an instant. The weight of it all—history, injustice, every stolen Black boy’s future came crashing down on me at once. I gripped my seat, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.
By the time the credits rolled, nobody moved. Nobody reached for their phones, nobody rushed to leave. We all just sat there, heavy with what we’d just witnessed, knowing we weren’t walking out of that theater the same.
Pride and Pain at the Oscars
When the Oscar nominations were announced, I held my breath.
Nickel Boys made it.
I remember seeing RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes’ names up there, and something inside me swelled. A Black man who refuses to water down our history. A Black woman whose pen doesn’t flinch. They were being recognized—not just for the technical brilliance of the film, but for the way they dared to tell the truth.
I clapped. I cheered. I texted friends. But underneath the joy, there was something else—something heavier. Because I knew that for every nomination, for every round of applause, there were still people who would never sit through this film, who would never confront the horror of places like the Dozier School for Boys.
I thought about my sons. About how one day, I’ll have to explain to them why films like this exist. Why we need to keep telling these stories, even when they hurt.
What We Choose to See
I walked out of that theater feeling exposed. That film had peeled back layers of myself I didn’t even realize I was wearing. As a filmmaker, I couldn’t help but appreciate Ross’ choices. The way he refused to let history sit quietly, how he placed archival footage into the story like a haunting reminder that the past isn’t done with us. The way he made it impossible to pretend that what happened then isn’t still happening now. But as a mother? I was wrecked.
Because Nickel Boys is not just about a reform school in the 1960s. It is about America. It is about now.
The final shot—Elwood’s gaze holding steady, daring us to look away—still haunts me. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what first-person storytelling does best. It doesn’t allow us to be passive. It demands that we see.
And as I sat in the car afterward, my hands still trembling, I thought about my own sons. About the stories I tell them. About the stories I have yet to write. And I wondered—when history looks back on this moment, will it feel any different? Or will another boy, decades from now, be staring into a camera, asking us the same question?