A powerful story eloquently told

 

  With Nickel Boys, director RaMell Ross, who has worked mostly in documentaries, brings a daring version of a Colson Whitehead novel to the screen. Multi-layered and willing to speak in its own visual  language, the movie insinuates itself in memory in evocative and mournful ways.

  Beginning with an opening that qualifies as an idyl about Florida in the 1960s and carrying the story into the 21st century, Ross introduces Elwood, a teenager who’s on track to escape the limits of life in Tallahassee as the power of Jim Crowe begins to wane. Elwood's on the verge of attending college, when a cruel detour lands him in a juvenile reformatory. 

    Ross risks an unconventional telling of his tale. In its early stages, Ross's camera shows us only what Elwood sees. Elwood's vision offers a slightly blurry take on the world we're entering. Snippets of news might be gleaned from TVs in a store window Elwood passes. Two young Black men step aside to allow whites to pass on a sidewalk. Elwood's grandmother expresses tender love for him.

    Initially, Ross's subjective approach may disorient viewers, but he proceeds leisurely, allowing us to experience the story with an immediacy that throws us off guard and keeps us from getting too far ahead of the characters.

     Elwood’s teacher (Jimmie Fails) has worked hard to get his charge into Melvin Griggs College. En route to the school and a fulfilling life, Elwood hitches a ride with a man driving a stolen Impala. Presumed guilty of something (probably doesn't matter what), Elwood is sent to a reform school known as Nickel Academy.

   Naive and trusting, Elwood believes he’s going to finish his education. It takes time for him to realize that he’s in a penal institution where young Black men are exploited and segregated from the white population of the "school." The young men work for free, and corrupt school officials profiteer, selling food that's meant to feed the Black "students."

     Some of the boys "disappear.” We don't need a guide to tell us what that means.

    Whitehead modeled his story on the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a real-life Florida institution where 100 Black students died and were buried in unmarked graves. The school operated from 1900 to 2011.

    Ross could have taken the easy way out, presenting  his story in linear fashion, but he charts his own path. For what might be a quarter of the movie, we see events only through Elwood’s eyes, which means we don’t know what he looks like until the viewpoint shifts to that of Turner, another Nickel youngster who’s more savvy about the system. 

  Ethan Herisse (as Elwood) and Brandon Wilson (as Turner) give performances that reflect each young man’s personality and history; Elwood maintains a belief in the possibility of being treated fairly; Turner grounds his cynicism in the reality of cruel experience. 

   If the long arc of the universe bends toward justice, Elwood wants a more immediate result. He continues to believe that his capabilities will be recognized. I'd call that a deep expression of faith.

   Perhaps to add context, Ross includes real images, some bordering on the surreal. He also distorts the flow time; sometimes, we meet a grown Elwood -- or so we think. An adult living in Harlem where he runs a successful moving business, Elwood can't escape the torments he experienced at Nickel. He needs to testify about them to help bring Nickels down.

   Emotionally, the film opens slowly. It features a deeply affecting turn by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as the grandmother who, despite limited resources, never gives up on Elwood. Ellis-Taylor provides a lesson about how much can be accomplished with limited screen time.

    Ross's experimental approach takes some adjustment.  The shifting points of view deprive us of context, forcing us to look beyond what's being shown. Sometimes, we have to pull back to remind ourselves whose eyes we're looking through. 

    But Nickel Boys creates the kind of disquiet that's spawned by memories that cannot be appeased.

     No, make that should not be appeased.  One of the year’s most haunting movies, Nickel Boys resonates with the eloquence of poetry, speaking powerfully as it pulls us into lives robbed of promise.

A broken heart in a changing city

Race and gentrification provide the background for The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a sweet and mournful story of loss.

Sometimes, dreams are rooted in a place —- a city, for example. Maybe even a neighborhood.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco deals with many issues, principal among them: race, gentrification and the ruthless onslaught of commercial imperatives. The movie tells a story of lost dreams by focusing on what once was an all-American symbol of stability, a house.

We'd like to think that houses once were repositories of family histories that would be passed from generation to generation. Grandpa's house always would be grandpa's house, if only in our imaginations.

In Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, an African-American family's triumph involved buying a house that became a brick-and-mortar symbol of upward mobility and arrival, as well as of persistence and of sustained hope. Even if we never had seen that house, we understood its power.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco also preoccupies itself with a house -- albeit in unexpected and revealing ways. A young man and his best friend occupy a house in a once-black neighborhood that's undergoing displacement prompted by gentrification. The young man believes that his grandfather built the house in the 1940s, following the style of the grand Victorian homes of 18th century San Francisco.

Even before occupying the house, Jimmie Fails -- played by Jimmie Fails (more about that in a minute) -- and his pal Montgomery (Jonathan Majors) had been trying to spiff up the house. They've painted its trim and wondered how to salvage a garden that has gone to ruin.

The current white residents of the house aren’t happy to find the young men at work but express a reluctant tolerance about their efforts.

When those residents lose the house, the fierce winds of the real estate market gather force and we know that this project — a reclamation not only of a house but of a past —- will come to naught.

We bring a bit of real-world knowledge to the movie. When it comes to real estate, market forces can be impossible to resist. If necessary, the past will be bulldozed. We know that all too well.

Director Joe Talbot, a childhood friend of Fails, tells a story that we're tempted to see as at least autobiographical in spirit because Fails uses his real name.

The movie's events may not be literarily true but they have the ring of metaphoric truth concerning the fragmentation of family in an increasingly uprooted society.

Approaching almost everything with deadpan sincerity, Fails and Montgomery reminded me of a couple of characters from a Samuel Beckett play; they're made of flesh and blood but also, slightly abstracted.

A quasi-theatrical atmosphere is enhanced by a group of neighborhood street people that serves as a Greek chorus for the story. Fails and Montgomery interact with them —- neither entirely separated from them nor entirely part of the group, either.

Most of the movie involves the efforts of the two young men to establish a home in a property they don’t own —- at least not in the conventional sense. But as the story progresses, you may find yourself thinking about issues of ownership and territory. Could there be another meaning of ownership at work here?

Talbot populates the movie with San Francisco characters and eccentricities. Danny Glover appears as Montgomery's blind grandfather; Rob Morgan plays Jimmie's embittered father; and Tichina Arnold portrays his aunt. Though sometimes tenuous, these family connections aren't lost. Jimmie grew up in various squats and in group homes.

And, then, there's the naked man at a bus stop, but I leave that for you to discover.

Emile Mosseri's musical score perfectly fits a movie that’s poetic, mournful, scrappy and sweet.

Talbot has trouble bringing the movie to a close and some of his images don't qualify as perfect blends of the real and the metaphoric. But the feeling here is one of love: for a city, for a longed-for connection with the past, and for a sense of place. There's also the love of two friends for each other.

I want to say (and please don’t take this in a negative way) that Last Black Man made me feel as if I’d attended a memorial service that mixed both grief and a sense of release, of letting go.

Late in the movie, Jimmie listens to two young white women talk on a bus. He tells them that they have to right to hate the city unless they love it. The right to hatred must be earned. Hate upscale obliterations that have ravaged neighborhoods. Hate the stress and tensions of constant economic struggle. Hate the pollution that's choking the life out of what's left of nature.

But love the memory, even if it's romanticized, of what once was. And perhaps equally important, mourn the loss of what could have been.