BEFORE: Gralen Bryant Banks carries over again from "Queen & Slim", and he'll be back in October for a double-feature of horror movies. Seriously, this guy gets around, it's kind of like once you notice a character actor, you're going to start seeing him everywhere - because he's everywhere.
This was originally going to be my last film in August, before I flipped around a part of the chain, because this seemed to offer a lot of linking opportunities, it almost seems a shame to treat it like just an ordinary film, maybe I needed to save it to get me out of a linking jam next year or something. But now I realize that most of those links would connect to either horror films or romance films, and I'm not in that mode right now. And the horror chain is set now, I don't need the assistance, even those two films with Mr. Banks in them are square in the middle of that block, so I need to focus on the links to the start of the block and also the end. But yeah, I'm aware of the 99% of the links that I don't use, as each day I really only need one.
I remember there was a big push last year to get Academy members to see this film and consider it for nomination - I know because I was working for an Academy member and he kept getting e-mails about screenings for this film. All that work, but it did pay off with two nominations, and one was for Best Picture, so I guess that's just what the promo teams need to do.
THE PLOT: A powerful friendship develops between two young Black men as they navigate the harrowing trials of reform school together.
AFTER: I can't really fault the story being told here, because it's based on a book, which is based on a true story, that of the Dozier School in Florida, also known as the "Florida School for Boys" if you want to find it on Wikipedia. It was a reform school in Florida that was founded in 1900 and had a long history of abuse as part of its "reform" process, and as you might expect, black boys were abused at a higher rate, got worse treatment than the white inmates, and there were secret burials when students died or were killed, as mass graves were later found closer to the black facilities. Not that white boys didn't get abused, they just lived to tell their stories in greater numbers.
The story here is told in a very heavy-handed way - not that there WAS a light-handed way to tell this story, it's dark heavy matter, but then it's really all about tone, isn't it? The film chooses to tell the majority of the story in the P.O.V. format, so usually the camera is showing us what one of the two main characters is seeing, so yeah, that's a bit of a gimmick and gimmicks are usually distracting, like the one used in "Here". Some of the events are depicted from just behind the lead character, which isn't exactly the same thing, it's more third person than first person, or more first person than P.O.V., whichever. This format is just confined to the flash-forwards, which depict one of the main characters living in NYC years later, and events in the news and his life make him reflect on his time at the Nickel Academy.
Elwood Curtis is the everyman, or the every Black man, his experiences are meant to be symbolic, like he's an amalgam of many different black youths who may have experienced some of the same things. He's born into the Jim Crow era in Florida, which means a certain set of rules for growing up right, and deviating from these rules may affect his chances. He's a big fan of Martin Luther King, as many people were, and this gives him hope, although then as you might imagine, much of that hope is pointless and circumstances prevent him from succeeding. He's raised by his grandmother because his father died in prison, and he does well in school, since he has a teacher who encourages to reject the history lessons provided by the textbooks. The teacher eventually turns him on to an accelerated study program at a black university, best of all the program is tuition-free, however he's forced to hitchhike there, and accepts a ride from a man in a stolen car, and when this man is arrested, Elwood is treated as an accomplice.
This means a trip to reform school, and on day one the new inmates are told that they can earn their way out of the system by collecting merit points and working their way up through four levels, however the reality is that the system only moves up white boys and black teens are sent out to pick oranges or paint the staff's houses as free labor. So there's no financial motive to allow black teens to be set free until they're obligated to be released at age 18. And by that time, having spent years in the system and endured abuse and torture, it would be a very bad idea to allow those black teens to be free to tell anyone how the Nickel Academy is run, so the system also benefits if those teens should happen to have an "accident" and be buried somewhere in secret. They could easily just tell that boy's family that he caught the Spanish flu and died and nothing could be done to save him.
Elwood forms a friendship with Turner, another student. Some scenes are depicted from Turner's P.O.V., in fact some of the scenarios between them we get to see from two angles, which is a bit confusing at first. Elwood's grandmother comes to visit him, but is not allowed to see him because he's in the infirmary - after being bullied by another student, the Nickel Academy staff chose to solve the problem by beating both students and Elwood needed to be hospitalized. So she settles for hugging Turner instead. Later we learn that she brought money to a lawyer to help appeal Elwood's conviction, only the lawyer skipped town with the money and set up a new practice in Atlanta.
Elwood decides to keep a journal of violations and abuse that he's witnessed, also the illegal smuggling of drugs and state supplies being sold to locals. He convinces Turner to deliver the journal to a visiting inspector, but this only causes Elwood to be placed in "Hell", which is a hot-box cell on the roof of a school building. Turner rescues him from his confinement and the two decide to escape from the institution using bicycles. They're pursued but it appears that only one of them makes it out. There's a bit of a twist in the flash-forwards but I had to read the Wiki plot summary to really understand it.
Some people really didn't like the POV gimmick, it seems, however other people compared it to "The Zone of Interest", that concentration camp film I watched way back on January 2 of this year. Can a film show us something by not showing us something directly? We never saw an overt depiction of Jews being killed in the camp, but you could get the idea by not looking directly at it, and I guess you can say the same sort of thing here. However, you just might find the constant use of POV and the non-visual presence of the main characters for most of the film to be distracting in itself. I guess that's up to you.
Directed by RaMell Ross
Also starring Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson (last seen in "The Way Back"), Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (last seen in "Lovely & Amazing"), Hamish Linklater (last seen in "One More Time"), Fred Hechinger (last seen in "Gladiator II"), Jimmie Fails (last seen in "Pieces of a Woman"), Ethan Cole Sharp, Daveed Diggs (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Sam Malone (last seen in "The Burial"), Mike Harkins (ditto), Billy Slaughter (ditto), Najah Bradley, Gabrielle Simone Johnson, Peter Gabb (last seen in "Green Book"), Bill Martin Williams (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Taraja Ramsess, Sean Tyrik, Bryant Tardy (also carrying over from "Queen & Slim"), Luke Tennie (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Trey Perkins, Robert Aberdeen (last seen in "Heist"), Bryan Gael Guzman (last seen in "Night School"), Escalante Lundy (last seen in "Keanu"), Ja'Quan Monroe-Henderson, Nicholas Stevens, Rachel Whitman Groves (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Lucy Faust (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Tanyell Waivers (last seen in "Ma"), Craig Tate (last seen in "King Richard"), Sara Osi Scott (last seen in "Hit Man"), Kaden Washington Lewis, Anthony Marble (last seen in "The Dirt"), LeBaron Foster Thornton, Jeremiah Eric Westbrook
with archive footage of Tony Curtis (last seen in "Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames"), Sidney Poitier (last seen in "Call Me Kate"), Martin Luther King Jr. (last seen in "Rather")
RATING: 4 out of 10 alligators walking around (or is it all the same one?)
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