The disparate treatments of "Nickel Boys" and "Exhibiting Forgiveness" this awards season raise questions about the role whiteness plays in a movie's merit.
Unless folks are doing something like recording whole scenes of a movie on their cellphones, you generally don't notice who else is in the audience with you at a movie theater. The lights fade to black, the screen brightens and everything -- and everyone -- around you virtually disappears. But sometimes taking stock of how others react to a film can tell you a lot about who becomes the arbiters of merit and why.
That's especially true when you're watching a Black movie.
An example that comes to mind is "12 Years a Slave," which tells the harrowing true story of a free Black man who was abducted and sold into slavery in 1841. At a 2013 press screening for the film in Manhattan, an inclusive audience sat transfixed in front of the screen during multiple scenes of sexual and physical violence.
Perusing the theater during those moments revealed something interesting. Some Black viewers were stone-faced, while others seemed exhausted by the second or third brutality scene. Many of the white folks, though, were inconsolable -- sobbing and blowing their noses. Perhaps that was on account of white guilt, a performative impulse, or because the film really is that stirring.
In any case, "12 Years a Slave," a Steve McQueen-directed movie that unflinchingly portrays the horrors of white supremacy, was heralded by a predominantly white and so-called liberal Hollywood elite. And it went on to earn nine Oscar nominations.
There was another staggering Black drama released that same year that was also a nonfiction story dealing with systemic racism, though in a more modern context: "Fruitvale Station." It earned exactly zero nominations from that same voting branch.
While the Ryan Coogler-directed film can hardly be accused of not engaging with the issue of whiteness through the lens of police brutality, there is a crucial difference between it and the aforementioned offering. It does not hinge on the racially motivated atrocity against its lead character or its perpetrator. Rather, it centers the Black human life that was cut short. It examines who the person was outside of the system of whiteness.
In essence, it's not a film that necessarily brings white audiences into its story. It actually seems indifferent to whatever reaction they might have. A Hollywood voting establishment that, in spite of all its lip service, has always had an issue appreciating art that does not revolve around their lives or even their ills could see that as a detriment.
They often look for art they can laud that can at least give the appearance that they're progressive despite showing all signs of the opposite. It's a self-gratifying tactic that doesn't serve the art at all, no matter how good it is.
It's been over a decade since "12 Years a Slave" and "Fruitvale Station" were released, and white people's proximity to a Black narrative still weighs heavily on their acclaim for it. This year's "Nickel Boys" and "Exhibiting Forgiveness" are two other Black films that have had parallel journeys to the big screen and awards season. But their trajectories could not be more different -- and for the same reason as their predecessors.
Similar to "12 Years a Slave," "Nickel Boys," an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, is an unrelenting drama following the lives of two young Black men trying to survive an abusive and racist reform school in the 1960s. The performances are good. The movie's technical merit, including its marvelous cinematography, has already helped it earn the attention of several awards bodies.
Despite it not even being released in limited theaters until Friday, there's hardly a day that goes by in the last few months -- since its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival this summer -- that there isn't press or hype about it. That includes numerous press screenings and initiatives.
But with the effects of systemic oppression being an impeding factor of the story, leaving little space to explore the characters' humanity, it's hard not to again wonder whether its appeal to arbitrated audiences is also that it is more for them to appreciate than others who might identify with their experiences.
Director RaMell Ross said he didn't intend for that to be the case, though. When the filmmaker was asked in an interview with Vanity Fair what his expectations are of audiences that are "older, very white and wealthier," he replied that "Nickel Boys" "emerges from our centrality, and it ostensibly is for us, but I'm happy to give it to others."
"Exhibiting Forgiveness," on the other hand, doesn't provoke that same question. It almost entirely wrestles with the complexities of its Black characters, and in ways Black audiences especially recognize. Systemic prejudices are understood as the reality in which they live, only because they are Black and it's set in the present day, not because the plot informs that. There's nary a moment when the film even gestures toward that to tell its story.
That helps create an intensely insulated film that centers a Black family whose drama is also deeply felt and astoundingly performed. The conflicts, joy and contradictions that propel the plot are of their own making -- and not the result of a racially motivated antagonist. White people, come to think of it, are merely ornamental in the story.
It is unequivocally a film by and for Black people to grapple with among ourselves -- one that has similarly affected Black audiences in the way "12 Years a Slave" moved white viewers. "Exhibiting Forgiveness" allows white audiences to enter its narrative incidentally only, while films like "Nickel Boys" and "12 Years a Slave" often engage directly with their white audiences through their own historical (and present-day) examination.
It's a distinction that often results in the latter films being considered worthy of Hollywood's highest honors.
Taking a look at the theatrical and post-theatrical odysseys of "Exhibiting Forgiveness" and "Nickel Boys" might help bring this into further focus. "Exhibiting Forgiveness" is an original story that was amazingly green-lit in our sequel- and adaptation-obsessed culture and based on the personal experiences of writer-director Titus Kaphar, a first-time feature filmmaker.
"Nickel Boys" came with all the fanfare of a known author, an acclaimed literary honor under its belt and at least the assumption that its Jim Crow-era setting means that whiteness could obviously play a significant role in the story. Even Ross' avant-garde filmmaking that shifts the camera and perspective between the two lead characters couldn't deter an audience that was already locked in.
Ross also told Vanity Fair that the process between the film being green-lit and going into production through Orion Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios was fairly smooth, to his own surprise. And since its Telluride premiere just a few months ago, "Nickel Boys" has experienced a constant whirlwind of praise from various awards bodies and audiences.
Meanwhile, Kaphar told me during an interview that "it was a fight" to get "Exhibiting Forgiveness" released in theaters. Like many filmmakers, especially Black filmmakers whose work is too often considered niche, Kaphar was approached about bringing the film to a streaming service.
Despite earning rave reviews following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, it went months without being acquired, and then months later -- not until October -- it was released by Roadside Attractions. By then, many people had forgotten about it or just hadn't heard much about it at all.
Save from a video-on-demand release and awards screeners available to voting press, the film hasn't been able to achieve any major award nominations and hasn't popped up on most "best of 2024" lists. (It made HuffPost's roundup.) Unlike "Fruitvale Station," it also failed to earn an Independent Spirit Award nomination or other award precursor nominations.
None of this discussion is to elevate any one Black film above another, suggest that a certain kind of Black film is better than the next, or even pit two films against each other. Both can and should be in the conversation. It is to question the deciding bodies that dictate the merit of Black films and have an honest conversation about what actually motivates their choices.
Because when there's been repeated instances over time that suggest that the role of whiteness in a film influences the perception of its quality, there must be some interrogation.