These Films See People the Way They See Themselves
It's incredibly rare — in fact, I don't think it's ever happened before this year — for a filmmaker to get an Oscar-nomination for a documentary and then land a best picture nomination for their next feature film. (A few have come close, though, and Ava DuVernay pulled it off, but in the opposite order.) Part of the blame lies with the Academy, which has somehow never nominated a documentary for Best Picture. It's also just difficult, though by no means impossible, to excel in both fiction and nonfiction in a way that captures voter attention.
Yet with 'Nickel Boys,' nominated this year for both best picture and best adapted screenplay, the photographer and filmmaker RaMell Ross has done just that. His previous film, the groundbreaking, lyrical documentary 'Hale County This Morning, This Evening,' was nominated for best documentary in 2019. 'Hale County' may be less well-known than its fictional sibling, but it's a vital companion piece. In fact, revisiting it now in the light of 'Nickel Boys' illuminates Ross's bigger project, and what makes his work so disruptive and his images so indelible.
Much has been written — including here in The New York Times — about 'Nickel Boys,' which topped my own list of 2024's best movies. In reimagining Colson Whitehead's novel, Ross and Joslyn Barnes shifted the book's third-person narration to first person perspective, so we spend nearly the entire film looking through the eyes of two teenage boys, Elwood and Turner.
That kind of perspective isn't alien to storytelling. Movies have used it (including Steven Soderbergh's recent thriller 'Presence'), and it's common in video games. But in 'Nickel Boys' it feels fresh and radical. Ross, along with the cinematographer Jomo Fray and the camera operator Sam Ellison, positioned themselves and their equipment incredibly close to the actors so that their perspectives would follow their performances. The effect is remarkable: While Whitehead's novel is about how we remember history, individually and collectively, Ross's film is about how we see history.
That 'we' includes the audience — in fact, it might be more accurate to say it implicates the audience. 'Nickel Boys' insistently shakes the viewer out of the habits audiences have developed when watching fiction films. The action sometimes cuts away to documentary footage, historical images of Black Americans, without a narratively obvious motivation to do so. The camera acts like a person with their own subjective view in the scene, not the ostensibly impartial eye watching drama unfold that fiction films traditionally employ. Characters look straight into the lens, seemingly directly into our eyes, dragging us into the story.
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'My dad was looking after me and he said, 'Let's see if we can get a youth loan and some games before the season ends.' So that's what I ended up doing. At 20, I went to Bolton. But I had only been training, so I played, scored a goal for them and pulled my hamstring.' Buffonge's time at United ended that summer, and he moved to Spezia of Italy's second-tier Serie B, managed by Vincenzo Italiano, who is now in charge of top-flight Bologna. Adjusting to life abroad was hard, and with Italiano wanting players who could make an instant impact to help the club's promotion bid — which was ultimately successful — there was little leeway granted for a young man trying to find his way in senior football in a new country. Advertisement Buffonge went on loan to Pergolettese in Serie C, before his best run of form between 2020 to 2022 in the Dutch second division at NAC Breda, for whom he scored his only senior goal. Spells elsewhere in the Netherlands at Telstar and Emmen followed but his progress has been stymied by two surgeries in the past two years, the first for a broken kneecap, and the second for a knee meniscus injury sustained as London-born Buffonge was preparing to join up with Caribbean country Montserrat's national team. His energy at the moment is away from the pitch, working on creating a platform that he says is to 'coach young men on mindset, masculinity, purpose and motivation'. He adds: 'I'm teaching the lessons that go beyond sport — discipline, resilience; things I had to master during my time at Manchester United and beyond.' He is still in regular contact with former team-mates such as Sancho, another Londoner who went north to pursue his football dream. They met through Gomes when Sancho was at Manchester City's academy. Buffonge has watched the career arcs of Sancho and Rashford at United with interest and, while he prefers to speak in general terms, he believes players should be judged on their on-field performances. 'To bring a person's appearance, or the car they drive, into their performance, I don't think is fair,' he says. 'Players train the way they feel inside. If these players are not feeling appreciated or heard, or they're not allowed to do what they do best, they're going to feel a type of way. 'And I feel like coaches don't have the time nor the care to really figure out why a player may be training a certain way. They'll just start pointing at all these other things, kind of like a smokescreen. 'We've all seen what Marcus did at Aston Villa (on loan for the second half of last season). These players who can do amazing things have that talent living inside, but due to a lot of external factors, sometimes it can get blocked. These shots at a person's character are what can have a negative impact, which is part of the work that I'm doing now. 'People who've watched me go through what I've gone through and what it must take, on top of the fact they see what I do on the pitch, it equates to a trusted voice.'
Boston Globe
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Weinstein jury deliberations scrutinize one accuser's account
Advertisement The former Hollywood powerbroker, 73, has pleaded not guilty to raping Mann and to forcing oral sex on two other women, Mimi Haley and Kaja Sokola. The Oscar-winning producer maintains that he never sexually assaulted or raped anyone, and his lawyers portrayed his accusers as opportunists who accepted his advances because they wanted a leg up in the entertainment world. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up While all three women stayed in contact with Weinstein despite what they say were assaults, Mann had a particularly complex history with him. During days on the witness stand, she testified that they had a consensual relationship that exploded into rape, yet continued afterward. Weinstein was one of the movie industry's most powerful figures until a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him became public in 2017, fueling the #MeToo movement and eventually leading to criminal charges. Advertisement He originally was convicted in 2020 of raping Mann and forcing oral sex on Haley. Sokola's allegation was added last year, after New York state's highest court overturned the 2020 conviction and sent the case back for retrial. Meanwhile, Weinstein is appealing a 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles. After a couple of days of apparent interpersonal friction, the retrial jury worked through Tuesday with no further complaints. The Associated Press generally does not identify people without their permission if they say they have been sexually assaulted. Sokola, Mann and Haley have agreed to be named.
