Directed by RaMell Ross | Written by Ross and Joslyn Barnes, adapting the book by Colson Whitehead | 140min | ▲▲▲ 1/2 | Amazon Prime

This is the only film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards that didn’t play in cinemas in Halifax. It’s a dubious and disappointing distinction. The film is distributed by Cineplex in Canada, so they easily could’ve put it in cinemas here. It doesn’t make much sense given the built-in interest of audiences to see nominated features, but at least people now have the chance to see it on Prime.

I was fortunate enough to see it on the big screen in another city, and what impresses right off the top is its gorgeous cinematography, by Jomo Fray. The story is about a young Black man, Elwood (Ethan Herisse), who’s unfairly sent to a reform school in 1960s Florida, where he makes a friend, Turner (Brandon Wilson), and has to live for years with the oppression of the facility. It’s told, for the first 45 minutes or so, from Elwood’s perspective, and then it switches to Turner’s perspective, then back and forth, shot through both of their POVs. It’s a daring gamble, a two-hour-20-minute roll of the dice through the eyes of two people. While it does give the audience an extra sense of connectivity, of empathy, with the two central characters, at times the filmmakers fall from the technical high-wire this requires. In those moments, the film comes off as an experiment rather than an experience.

The meta, self-awareness of the project opens a door to even more avant garde choices — montages of grainy photos to jump cuts between scenes and between time periods. It’s frequently gorgeous to see, but these devices don’t always serve the narrative.

Individual scenes evoke both Son Of Saul and late period Terrence Malick, movies like The Tree of Life and Knight Of Cups, the scope of the storytelling startling, the editing hypnotic. I was thinking it might benefit from a second viewing, to better capture the imagery that flies by, foreshadowing some of what’s to come. Furthermore, the tale of two African-American friends in a reform school in the 1960s can’t help but echo the stories of Indigenous kids in residential schools here in Canada.

And yet, it’s also paced so deliberately, and so committed to its storytelling style, that at times it’s like a gallery show of the moving image without a rooting theme to hook the emotions.  The film flashes forward in the time, to years later after the events in the 1960s, and in those scenes the camera is locked behind one of the leads’ heads to distinguish it from the POV camera of the rest of the film. It makes for a clumsy viewing experience and doesn’t work at all. At its extended running time, these detours diminish the parts where the film is otherwise powerful.

All told, Nickel Boys is the most unorthodox film to be recognized by the Academy this year, with the possible exception of The Substance. It deserves to be seen and celebrated for its reach, if not entirely its grasp.