"Nickel Boys" and "The Girl with The Needle"

These two films were probably my toughest watches this season, and also two of the absolute best movies I saw from 2024.  

"Nickel Boys," based on the book by Colson Whitehead, takes a very specific adaptation approach that seems to be working for some viewers but not others.  The entire film is shot from a first person perspective, so we only see what the two main characters see.  Initially this feels like a gimmick, but it becomes an integral part of the experience of watching the film, and is central to some absolutely devastating emotional moments.   

Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is an African-American teenager with a promising future, growing up in Civil Rights era Tallahassee, Florida.  Because he unknowingly accepts a ride from a car thief, he's sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school based on the notoriously abusive Florida School for Boys.  At the Academy, Elwood becomes friends with Turner (Brandon Wilson), an African-American boy from Texas and together they try to survive years of terrible treatment, while making plans for escape and resistance.  The film occasionally also flashes forward to an adult Elwood (Daveed Diggs) living in New York City, who is considering whether to testify about his experiences at Nickel Academy.   Occasionally we're also shown montages of other images, reflecting Elwood's thoughts and state of mind.  

Written and co-directed by RaMell Ross, with cinematography by Jomo Fray, "Nickel Boys" is an incredibly immersive, beautifully realized examination of memory and perspective.  Even without the tragic subject matter, seeing the world from Elwood's perspective for two hours is such an enlightening thing to experience.  The scene that hit me hardest was one of the simplest, where Elwood's grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) comes to Nickel Academy for a visit.  It's not just the way that Elwood sees the world, but how everyone else sees Elwood, or doesn't see him - the way they speak to him, the shifts in body language, and whether there's eye contact.  The film feels incredibly intimate and personal, especially in the way that it transcends time and space and reality.  The brief inclusion of other POVs forces us to question if Elwood is a reliable narrator.  Is his subjective view of the world something we can trust?  I've seen a few other movies that have tried similar first person narratives, like "Hardcore Henry" and "Son of Saul," but "Nickel Boys" is really something unique, and I'm glad it's finding its audience.    

On to "The Girl With the Needle," a black and white film set in Copenhagen from Swedish-Polish director Magnus von Horn.  Initially the film's aesthetic struck me as so austere and miserable as to verge on parody.  That feeling didn't last.  Set in 1919, we follow an impoverished seamstress, Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) who takes up with her boss Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup) because she believes that her husband Peter (Besir Zeciri), a solider, has died in the Great War.  This leaves her in dire straits, but eventually she is able to find work as a wet nurse for a woman named Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), who takes unwanted babies and illegally places them with other families.  The story unfolds like a dark fairy tale, of the "Bluebeard" variety, as Karoline slowly unravels the truth about Dagmar and comes to terms with her own conflicted feelings about motherhood.   

"The Girl With the Needle" is not a film I had many expectations for, and I found myself being constantly surprised.  I kept thinking that the narrative was going to follow one familiar path or another - the relationships with Jørgen and Peter, the struggle to end an unwanted pregnancy (the film's title comes from Karoline's attempt to give herself an abortion), or simply surviving in a brutal, harsh world where we see violence constantly being used against the weak and displaced.  However, the film is really about Karoline's relationship with Dagmar, who is a loving mother, a shrewd businesswoman, and perhaps also a complete monster.  Trine Dyrholm's performance is bold and horrifying.  Here is this strong, unflinching woman who is willing to acknowledge uncomfortable truths, but exploits them for her own gain.  It's difficult to condemn her completely, because the cruelty of the time and place she inhabits enables her atrocities, and by a certain twisted logic she's not in the wrong.  

I've always had a great fondness for female villains and monsters, and Dagmar is one of the most memorable I've seen in a while.  Her effectiveness is in her complexity, which also helped assuage some of my initial worries about the film's potential political messaging.  The ugliness of her actions is dwarfed by the lies she uses to justify them.  Karoline is no fairy tale heroine either, willing to be vicious and unkind in order to ensure her own survival.  Her wanting an abortion is never framed as immoral, and her later maternal yearnings not hypocritical.  I want to add warnings here that anyone sensitive about violence against children or the depictions of birth and early motherhood difficulties should tread very carefully.  There are images in this film as potent as those found in any horror picture, and they won't be easy to forget.  

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