writer-director RaMell Ross on the montage-crafting and meaning-making of Nickel Boys • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

But it is fascinating. Are you conscious of the voice you’ve built in the midst of working?
I think so, but the language that I would use is the “mode of inquiry”. The ability for Hale County to question and to present the answer to the things I’m interested in that’s found over the course of shooting and editing and making that final product is something that has more iterations and has a sort of value. I’m interested in seeing what that looks like in the context of an actual narrative in Colson’s beautiful mythology. How can you apply that aesthetic to characters? And if so, what does that feel like and what does that tell you about them? Does it tell you anything? It’s just part of the same ongoing question.

How do those lines of inquiry translate to your production of images?
One of the breakthrough sentences that I wrote was that “I wanted to use time to understand how we came to be seen.” I say that in Hale County, and it sounds super conceptual, and maybe it’s just about patience, but it isn’t necessarily only about patience and looking for a long time. To me, it’s also about making images that are not easily consumed, making images that have that impression that you’re talking about, the one on the bus. There’s an after image inside of you, giving images an element to not just be utilitarian or illustrative, but also giving them time allows a person to be in the context of meaning-making in a way that I find super generative. That was a very intentional approach to this film.

That image making, of course, creates opportunities to flip the perceived meaning of images, too. I’m thinking about the lunchroom scene where we begin half of it from Elwood’s perspective, and then you replay the scene from Turner’s perspective. That moment of inversion isn’t in the book. Why that instance to turn the audience on their head, so to speak?
There are a couple of reasons. We know that shooting a film from one point of view comes with some baggage. Not being able to see the character does affect the way you experience a narrative. That’s good—we need to keep exploring other modes of connecting with narrative and characters. But at the same time, we didn’t want to deprive the audience of seeing him. It’s also such a beautiful idea. When Joslyn [Barnes] and I were talking through what point of view would mean, to have only Turner see him, well, being able to see someone is almost a philosophical and spiritual feat. But in that moment in time in the narrative, you’re almost a little like: ‘I know what the film’s gonna be.’

It coincides with Elwood almost realizing the extent to which he’s in this new world. He goes through the orange grove and he has a couple other moments, I think he sees the football being thrown, and he’s no longer the bright-eyed Elwood you saw in the reflections. He is no longer the bright-eyed Elwood you saw in the photo booth. He’s fundamentally caving into himself. To see him for the first time in that way does something to the audience. Because the viewer as Elwood, from this point in time, aside from getting pulled over, they’ve had an optimistic view of the world, and maybe an optimistic view of one’s disposition in it.