Louisiana-shot ‘Nickel Boys’ is an artful triumph from a New Orleans Film Festival centerpiece

There’s an easier way, of course. There’s always an easier way.

In the case of filmmaking, it’s called pandering.

Simply check off all the genre boxes that make audiences ooh and aah — big-name stars, dazzling visual effects, a third-act showdown involving superbeings in tights, capes or both — and, with a little good fortune, you’re on the road to a fat box office payday.

Lucky for us, RaMell Ross isn’t inclined to take the easier way.

The emerging filmmaker, whose photographs were the subject of an exhibit at New Orleans’ Ogden Museum of Southern Art from fall 2021 to spring 2022, didn’t take the easier way for his debut feature, the Sundance-decorated experimental documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.”

Similarly, he doesn’t take the easier way for his latest film, the Louisiana-shot “Nickel Boys,” a searing and thrillingly unconventional adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name.

A New Orleans Film Fest centerpiece

Ross’ film served as a centerpiece selection of October’s New Orleans Film Festival. This week, it gets a limited local release, arriving as the Louisiana film industry’s best chance at leaving a mark on Hollywood’s currently unfolding award season.

And for good reason.

Built upon a nonlinear storyline and benefiting from beautiful cinematography steeped in a visual dreaminess suggestive of a hazy memory — though one repressed, not forgotten — Ross’ artfully audacious “Nickel Boys” eschews both convention and capes. Relying instead on his own invented filmic vocabulary, he in the process coaxes his audience into what becomes a riveting and unforgettable tale of the Jim Crow South.

At the center of it all is Elwood (Ethan Herisse), a gifted teenager whose bright future is suddenly derailed when he finds himself in the wrong place at the worst time.

Instead of heading for college, as was his plan, he is sentenced to a hellhole known as Nickel Academy.

Inspired by horrifying reality

Set in 1962 Tallahassee but filmed in late 2022 in Hammond, LaPlace, New Orleans, Ponchatoula and Thibodaux, it’s inspired by a horrifyingly real place: Florida’s now-defunct Dozier School for Boys, a reformatory that made headlines in 2009 when its shocking history of abuse spilled out into the open.

Elwood finds himself staring down the barrel of that ugliness the second he arrives at Nickel.

Fictional or not, it’s difficult to witness the unabashed racism and cruelty he must endure. Fortunately, he finds a friend in fellow inmate and kindred spirit Turner (Brandon Wilson).

They can’t stop the cruelty, but they bond over it, looking out for each other when possible. Fueled by Elwood’s stubborn optimism, they also dream of the day they can finally walk away from their shared hell.

If they get that chance.

Without giving anything away, it should be noted that “Nickel Boys” is not a feel-good film. It is a heartbreaker through and through. But that’s only because reality so often is, too.

Unusual point of view

There’s an argument to be made that Ross’ reliance on first-person point-of-view gets in the way of things from time to time. Intended to ramp up the pathos by putting the audience in the characters’ shoes, the technique to some extent has the opposite effect, blunting the emotional impact of the lead performances given that we’re looking through those characters’ eyes rather than into them.

As original as it feels, the first-person approach has been experimented with numerous times before, from Humphry Bogart’s turn in 1947’s “Dark Passage” to 2015’s “Hardcore Henry” and various points in between. All suffer from the same emotional disconnect to varying degrees.

That said, the sheer depth of emotion at work in “Nickel Boys” — the palpable anguish, the infuriating injustice, the heartrending loss — more than compensates for any perceived stylistic flaws.

Granted, there are less challenging movies in theaters right now, movies that take the easy way, ticking boxes and tickling the masses.

Few, however, crackle with the vitality of “Nickel Boys” — and few will likely stay with viewers as long.

Mike Scott can be reached at moviegoermike@gmail.com.

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‘NICKEL BOYS’

3.5 stars, out of 4

SNAPSHOT: Filmmaker RaMell Ross directs a searing and thrillingly unconventional adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning 2019 novel, about the experiences of two young black men sentenced to an abusive 1960s Southern reform school.

CAST: Ethan Herisse, Daveed Diggs, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Jimmie Fails.

DIRECTOR: Ross.

RATED: PG-13 for racism, strong language including racial slurs, violence

TIME: 2 hours 20 minutes.

WHEN AND WHERE: Opens Friday (Jan. 17) at the Prytania Uptown, Broad Theater and Elmwood Palace.