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When Nickel Boys was released in 2024, it caused an immediate stir with critics and filmgoers, who were captivated not only by the film’s poignant handling of an important and timely story, but also by its unique cinematography style. Nickel Boys was almost entirely filmed from the first-person perspective of its protagonists, Elwood and Turner. The entire first half of the film is shot from Elwood’s perspective, and the audience only sees Elwood when he briefly sees himself reflected in windows and other reflective surfaces. The viewer, then, sees from Elwood’s own point of view as he goes about his daily life in Tallahassee, Florida, in the early 1960s and, later, when he is sentenced to Nickel Academy on false charges of being an accomplice to a crime.  

Later on, the film suddenly switches to Turner’s perspective when the two teenagers sit together at the cafeteria at Nickel Academy. From Turner’s perspective, the viewer sees Elwood clearly for the first time in the film. He is, from Turner’s point of view, a thoughtful but anxious teenager who struggles to adapt to his new surroundings. The clear anxiety on Elwood’s face was not previously visible to the audience, granting the viewer a new perspective on his character and feelings. From this point on, the film switches between the perspectives of Elwood and Turner. In addition, scenes in the film are intercut with a wide variety of media, including speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., newspaper clippings, racist imagery from the early 20th century, shots of NASA’s space shuttle program, other films, and photographs documenting the Civil Rights Movement. This media helps to contextualize the events of the film, both within its 1960’s setting and also within the long history of racism and inequality in the United States.  

First-person perspective is used quite often in literature but is much more rarely employed in film. One other example, noted by many critics as a precursor to and inspiration for the style of Nickel Boys, is the 1947 noir film Lady in the Lake, which was filmed from the point of view of its central protagonist, private detective Phillip Marlowe, as he attempts to solve a missing woman. In both The Lady and the Lake and Nickel Boys, the use of first-person perspective came with technical challenges, but also allowed the filmmakers to immerse the audience in the action and atmosphere of the film. When filming Nickel Boys, director RaMell Ross shot most films as “one-ers” or long-takes, which present an extended and continuous scene, without “cuts” to other cameras. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Ross noted the “choreography” of filming was “quite difficult,” as they frequently had to film face-to-face with the actors in order to capture their points of view. Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray refer to their approach “sentient perspective,” as they attempted to mimic, in their camerawork, the feeling of being in the body of the film’s protagonists, observing what they observe and noticing what they notice. “For two hours, you truly are walking in the shoes of another person,” Fray remarked in an interview with the Associated Press, “And that’s at the heart of the promise of cinema.” 

Many critics noted the film’s unique and innovative use of the first-person perspective as one of the film’s primary strengths, though a smaller number of critics regarded it as emotionally alienating, as the viewer does not often get to see the faces of its protagonists, nor witness their emotional reactions to the events that unfold around them. Addressing these critics, Ross asked, in an interview with the Associated Press, “Do you know a way to treat the viewer not as a voyeur in the death of Black folks? I don’t know, but I think there’s an interesting way to try that doesn’t repeat the brutality in the minds of others. It gives them life. It restores something. It’s not about their death.” For Ross, and for many of the critics who lauded the approach taken in Nickel Boys, the first-person perspective is not just a stylistic gimmick, but rather, a strategy for portraying violence against Black people without giving into a voyeuristic impulse. In a scene in which Elwood is brutally beaten by Spencer, the superintendent, for attempting to intervene in a fight between other students, the film does not show the violence directly. Rather than focusing on images of violence inflicted on Black bodies, the scene highlights Elwood's nervousness as he waits for his punishment, as well as the fear of the other students. Fray, describing Ross’s approach and goals to the New York Times, describes the film’s attempt to avoid direct depiction of violence as an attempt to avoid trivializing this dark moment in American history. Nickel Boys, then, marks a profound new direction for depicting historical violence without reproducing or normalizing that violence.

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