NEW YORK (AP) â RaMell Ross sometimes sends his photography students out on a unique assignment. He tells them to photograph a white person, a Black person, an Asian person and an Indian person. âAnd,â he adds, âI want you to ask them how they want to be represented.â
Before Ross was a photographer, a professor, a documentarian and, most recently, a he was a point guard whose 6-foot-6-inches height allowed him to peer over defenders to see the entire court. Rossâ basketball career was derailed by injuries while at Georgetown University. But he has, ever since been fascinated with the ways we see.
In âNickel Boys,â one of the most thrillingly innovative American films of the decade, Ross adapts . Itâs about two young men â Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson) â whoâve been sent to an abusive, mid-century Florida reform school called Nickel Academy.
The story, laced with the cruelties of the Jim Crow-era South, has commonalities with films made before. But the grammar of âNickel Boysâ is entirely its own. Ross shot the film, which opens Friday in New York and expands in coming weeks, almost entirely from the point of view of Elwood and Turner. As we watch, weâre looking through their eyes. We gaze up at the sky or feel a blow to the head or feel the warmth of someone affectionately looking back at us.
âItâs an ode to looking out of the eyes of those whose eyes have been owned by others, and whose perception has been managed by others,â Ross says. âFilms that take place in the past reproduce the aesthetics of the past. I question the aesthetics of the past."
In a medium that has been called âan empathy machine,â âNickel Boysâ is a striking leap forward. In situating the viewer within the inner world of Elwood and Turner, it brings us closer to their experience, while shedding many of the conventions of both modern moviemaking and historical depictions from the time period of âNickel Boys.â
âI know if any person in here that has wild stereotypes about the world that they acknowledge or donât if they saw through my eyes, they would be other gone, challenged or would collapse,â said Ross in a recent interview over coffee in midtown Manhattan. âThe power is in the self and the eyes.â
For Ross, who teaches visual art at Brown University, âNickel Boysâ isnât just about finding a new way to photograph. Itâs an attempt to uncover a visual language of consciousness, and specifically Black consciousness. In the time of âNickel Boysâ the dominant imagery was created overwhelmingly through a perspective that wasnât Elwoodâs, that wasnât Turnerâs.
âThe question is,â says Ross, âcan you repopulate the missing archive?â
Seeing first person
POV camerawork has been tried occasionally through movie history. Robert Montgomeryâs 1947 Raymond Chandler adaptation âThe Lady in the Lakeâ is generally credited as the first mainstream film shot in first person. That same year, âDark Passageâ began with a first-person prison escape, and doesnât change perspective until the escapee (Humphry Bogart) undergoes plastic surgery.
But Ross wasnât thinking about any precedents. Ross, who wrote the script with Joslyn Barnes complete with head turns and camera moves, wanted something much deeper than a gimmick.
In his most celebrated photography series, Ross examined Blackness across a Southern terrain indelibly traversed by photographers like Walker Evans. (Ross had moved to Greensboro, Alabama, to do social work and teach a college readiness program.) His images tend to be in dialogue with the photography of the past. Time, Ross says, became his medium.
âIâm definitely interested in thickening the present,â he says.
For a month before shooting, Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray rehearsed with a small digital camera. Fray, who shot Raven Jacksonâs lyrical 2023 mosaic drama found the process of finding new filmic vernacular enthralling.
âWe have only begun to scratch the very surface of what cinema is capable of. Cinema is a medium that shares a language with our dreams,â says Fray. âWeâre still at the infancy of this as an artistic form.â
Creating a âsentient perspectiveâ
Ross and Fray, each of whom can be dazzlingly analytical about filmmaking and photography, found they werenât exactly seeking POV. In reality, that would be too shaky and uncentered. Instead, they honed what they call âsentient perspectiveâ â a POV that didn't mimic eyes but came closer to the feeling of being within a body.
âItâs an invitation,â says Fray. âThe image is an invitation for the viewer to really place themselves in a body that they may or may not recognize. For two hours, you truly are walking in the shoes of another person. And thatâs at the heart of the promise of cinema.â
It wasnât easy. Countless basic actions would need to be rethought. What would a hug look like? Production design, by Norah Mendis, essentially needed to be in all directions, 360 degrees. Operating the camera, Fray almost had to be an actor in the film, himself.
âThe second that we started getting into how to make the film, I understood immediately why films like this arenât made,â says Ross.
Yet, part of the beauty of âNickel Boysâ is how impressionistic the imagery still is. We get to know Elwood and Turner not just by what they do or what they say, but how they look upon the world, what they notice. Herisse and Wilson had the unique experience of always acting either alongside the camera rig or staring back into a lens.
âA lot of time weâd be trading places with Jomo or RaMell, but weâd stay really close and try to stay as present as possible,â says Wilson. âOn the other side, when you have to look down a lens, thatâs a different thing. Youâre trying to not look like youâre looking at a camera, but seeing the other person on the other side of the camera."
âThe first time I watched it, there was a complete detachment,â says Herisse. âI didnât make the connection that that was me.â
Perspectives on POV
The experience of watching âNickel Boysâ has been transcendent for many, though some critics have been more tepid about how the subjective POV alters your relationship to the characters. Some have said that connection is harder without the benefit of regular close-ups.
While Ross grants that âNickel Boysâ â a for best feature film, drama, and with â might be challenging for those who donât regularly engage with art or go to the theater, itâs not a criticism he has much patience for.
âI donât give a (expletive) that you want these Black boysâ narratives to be told in a way you think makes you feel good, or make you feel connected emotionally. Can you hear yourself? Do you know how self-centered you sound?â says Ross, addressing those critics. âDo you know a way to treat the viewer not as a voyeur in the death of Black folks? I donât know, but I think thereâs an interesting way to try that doesnât repeat the brutality in the minds of others. It gives them life. It restores something. Itâs not about their death.â
Ross imagines heâll be making more movies, but, he says, heâs in no rush. As a professor he gets to watch movies, look at photography, and talk to smart young people who have been trained in words but not in images.
And Ross is still working out his own vernacular. âShootingâ film, for example, doesnât sound right to him. Whatâs better?
âI donât know yet,â Ross says. âEngage the world. Go participate. Go make images.â
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
