On the TV, Elwood Curtis watches astronauts soar into space. He listens to Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches and participates in Civil Rights marches. His teacher offers him a free spot at Melvin Griggs Technical College due to his intelligence.
Elwood Curtis, an African-American high school student in 1960s Tallahassee, is hopeful that the world is changing for the better.
But as he walks along the side of the road on his way to his college classes, a Black man passes by and offers him a lift. Not long after, they’re pulled over. The car’s been stolen, and because Elwood was in the car, too, he’s implicated in the crime.
Instead of attending Melvin Griggs, Elwood’s sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school for juvenile boys. The Black boys are segregated from the white boys. They’re put to hard work. They’re forced to aid in the Academy’s illegal activities. They’re severely beaten when they don’t comply. Some, like Elwood, are beaten even when they do the right thing.
To Elwood, Nickel Academy isn’t like the rest of the world. Nickel Academy is full of unjust people. He believes if someone exposes its wrongdoings, the good people of the world will address the injustices there. And if Elwood can’t escape the school through its graduation process, the courts will save him.
But Elwood’s closest friend at Nickel, Turner, doesn’t think the rest of the world is all that different from Nickel. Outside the Academy’s property, people cling to the same cruelty in their hearts—Nickel just gives everyone permission to stop pretending.
And time will tell whose worldview holds true.
Elwood attempts to help a child who is being bullied by two larger teens. He gets beaten for his efforts, both by the bullies and later by the school authorities when he receives the same punishment as the others. The incident causes Elwood’s closest friend, Turner, to caution Elwood to lay low and play by the school’s rules.
However, the unjust punishment doesn’t deter Elwood. “If everybody looks the other way, then everybody’s in on it,” Elwood objects. Though it seems as if the whole world is against him, Elwood never forsakes his convictions in standing against injustice. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches, Elwood believes that most people are generally good and will stand up against injustice if they know about it. And even as people anecdotally prove the opposite, time and again, Elwood never wavers in his devotion. And that makes his story a tragic, yet poignant and realistic one.
Turner, meanwhile, struggles to adopt Elwood’s hopeful mentality. He’s the more pragmatic of the two, simply looking to get by unscathed at a place (and world, he notes) that doesn’t care for him. Still, Elwood’s optimism begins to influence Turner to consider his point of view. Elwood doesn’t deny that they’ll face suffering, but he believes that it’s worth it to endure their current pain to move toward the future that they long for.
We hear a couple of Bible verses and see several references to Christianity: a nurse reads Romans 8:36-39. We hear a portion of Psalm 23. A song mentions King David.
One character describes one of Nickel Academy’s punishments as like being “thrown into hell,” where they “suck the soul out of you.” A truck drags a cross behind it. Someone says that God is the Judge. People celebrate Christmas.
We hear someone summarize this quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep the streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.’”
Elwood strips down to his underwear to go swimming in a pool. A man and woman kiss. Elwood’s grandmother bathes, though nothing is seen. The boys at Nickel Academy are forced to shower together in a confined space; nothing is shown.
Someone is shot and killed. A boy gets beaten so badly offscreen that he can hardly stand up. A few boys get sent into a room to be beaten by their supervisors as punishment, and while the camera pans away from that attack, we hear the cries of the children as weapons repeatedly strike their backs. The result of the beating leaves one boy recovering in the hospital for some time. Likewise, we’re told of other wicked punishments inflicted upon some of the children, such as being forced to eat a lightbulb or being stuffed in a laundry machine.
A bully punches Elwood in the face, causing him to hit the ground hard, briefly knocking him unconscious and leaving a small spot of blood on the floor. A boy punches the wood of a boxing ring excitedly, not realizing he’s causing his knuckles to bleed. Someone intentionally poisons himself with soap powder in order to speak with a friend in the hospital. A child falls off a jungle gym.
We’re shown remnants of human remains in various flashing pictures as well as unmarked graves. We’re told someone lost his arm in the Vietnam War. A boy imitates a lynching. We hear what sounds like someone being beaten and kidnapped. We hear references to other offscreen abuse, too.
A student thumbs through a flipbook depiction of a man being lynched. A teacher tells his class that he was hit on the head with a tire iron. We hear a reference to suicide.
The f-word is used once, and the s-word is heard more than 20 times. We also hear multiple uses of “a–,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is used in vain six times, including five uses of “g-dd–n.” Jesus’ name is used in vain once. We hear a couple offensive words for Black people.
People drink liquor and beer. A few people smoke cigars or cigarettes. Someone says that he believes his mother truly loves him, but she loves liquor more. We hear a reference to someone being “strung out.”
Obviously, racism is a big part of this film. We see white and Black children segregated in the camp, and we see many ways that the white kids get to enjoy things that the Black kids don’t. Despite all the children being there for various forms of criminal activity (in the eyes of the law, that is), the Black children are treated far worse.
The ridiculous nature of the inconsistency is especially highlighted by the treatment of one boy who is half-white, half-Hispanic. The boy is sent back and forth between the two sides of the camp, spending some time with the Black boys and some time with the white boys.
The authorities of the Academy are corrupt. Not only do they segregate the teens and treat them cruelly, but they also force some of them to sell the supplies meant for the Black children for extra profit. They claim to encourage the children to become model citizens while engaging in self-serving and wicked behavior, such as attempting to rig a boxing match in order to win more money.
We’re told that someone stole a car. A man abandons a family in need.
Nickel Boys, adapted from the book of the same name, is based on the real-life Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a Floridian “reform school” that operated from 1900 to 2011. According to investigations of that school, more than 50 bodies in unmarked graves were discovered, and more than 100 deaths occurred in that time. Far more cases of abuse, predominantly of the School’s Black children, were reported, too.
The movie is shot almost entirely from Elwood and Turner’s first-person perspective, alternating between the two boys as they endure the Academy’s abusive conditions. And because of that, we don’t actually see much of the film’s dramatized depictions of the real school’s cruelty. Instead, that suffering remains almost always just out of sight as Elwood or Turner avert their eyes, fixating on other things in a failed hope for comfort.
But even if Elwood, Turner or the world don’t look, that doesn’t mean the injustice isn’t happening. Despite everything, Elwood—and we—still hear it all. We hear the beatings, the abuse and the crude language. And we hear far more rumors of violence, too.
Nickel Boys is a difficult watch. Much of the film’s content—onscreen or not—will be tough to stomach for viewers. But acts of human depravity should be tough to stomach, so much so that we, like Elwood, would be willing to stand against them, even if it seems the whole world is looking the other way.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
