Was 2024 a Better Year for Movies or Books?
Nickel Boys, The Nickel Boys, Anora, and The Oscars
The Richard Brody Rule is alive and well: whatever opinion New Yorker film critic Richard Brody has, I will have the equal and opposite one. Brody loved Nickel Boys—this year’s best-picture nominated adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel—writing that, “Few films have ever rendered a major work of fiction so innovatively yet so faithfully.” Brody loves the film’s big bold stylistic choice, which is that the majority of the movie is filmed in a first-person point of view, as if the viewer is in the eyes of the protagonist, looking out. In Brody’s opinion the effectiveness of this perspective is that “the images, rather than merely recording Elwood’s emotions, register the cause of those emotions and allow the viewer to partake in his inner world.”
The style of Nickel Boys reminded me most of the kinds of videos you see in a modern art museum that are comprised of a flashing collection of evocative images. Examples from the actual film: an alligator wandering an industrial kitchen; a hyper close-up of a cut piece of cake; a time lapse video of sun rising and setting over fields. There’s no doubt some cool stuff going on visually. The archival footage, intercut with the main narrative, is exceptionally unearthed and chosen, and gives the film a fabulous sense of the historical time period as well as some of its most interesting and memorable moments. Frankly, one of my biggest takeaways from the film (along with the image of a retro Black Santa Claus surfing) is that I want to go watch The Defiant Ones.
But as for narrative, character development, and drama, the first-person, MoMA cinematic experience of Nickel Boys didn’t work for me and I doubt will work for many outside the extreme cinephile club. Foremost, the bold camera choice presents a number of practical storytelling issues. The first-person point of view isn’t always consistent or clear. For example, if we’re behind the eyes of our character, how can a human eye do a 1000x zoom into a piece of cake? Then there’s the sound. We, too, as the viewer are given our protagonist’s ears, so that when his lines are delivered they sound like we’re inside the tin can of his brain. The camera and sound choices often make the acting and line delivery come off incredibly stiff and wooden as the viewer acutely notices two actors reciting their lines rather than becoming immersed in two people interacting on screen. All this adds up to a disorienting experience, just like an artsy video installation can be. Even though I have read the book Nickel Boys is based on, the film had me constantly questioning my recollection of what happened in the story. I genuinely wondered if viewers who haven’t read the book or a review of the film would understand the basic mechanics of what happened before their eyes.
The reason I find myself so often at odds with Brody is that he seems like a film critic who has watched too many films. His reviews feel jaded, like a visual artist who has spent years mastering the techniques of realism and will never be able to appreciate a good landscape painting again. He gives points for newness and plays a constant game of zag (probably unconsciously) when it comes to what conventional viewers and critics will like. Brody rates the effects of Nickel Boys—sans any practical storytelling issues—highly because those who consume art at such a high and sustained clip often seem to need something different in order to feel anything at all.
The reason we know the film doesn’t work as well on a narrative or emotional level is because we have the book the to compare the movie to. I first read The Nickel Boys on Kindle glued to my reading chair and still remember the genuine shock I felt when looking up the page count later (210). Such is the immensity and emotional heft that Whitehead packs into this incredible novel. Whitehead takes a dark piece of little-known history, the Dozier School for Boys an abusive “reform” school in Florida, and creates a richly imagined masterpiece, inventing the characters and submerging his (no doubt extensive) research deep in the background. Whitehead uses a familiar allegorical kind of setup, two friends — Elwood and Turner — with opposite temperaments and worldviews (mirroring classic civil rights dichotomies, Washington/Douglas, Martin/Malcom, etc.) and renders them complexly human and individual by the end of the novel.
Having been moved by the inner lives, characters, and story Whitehead puts to page in The Nickel Boys, Brody’s assessment that “the images…allow the viewer to partake in his inner world” feels completely off. The film puts you literally in the perspective of the characters while only showing them as people in shattered fragments. That might be enough material for a film critic to put together an inner world, but conventions—whether in books or films—exist because they reliably have proven their ability to show us outer and inner lives if you aren’t too jaded to feel them. I had sky high expectations for Nickel Boys because of reviews and because the source material it got to pull from is so exceptional. But the film, more than a great adaptation, felt like a collage of images inspired by the book.
Seriously, if you were thinking of watching the film, just go read the novel instead. The Nickel Boys is truly one of the best novels of the 21st century (although on The New York Times list of the 100 best books of this century so far, they have Whitehead’s novel Underground Railroad as #7 on their list, a choice I strongly disagree with and will write about in the future).
Nickel Boys is just one film. And yet it represents so much of what is strange about the Oscars and the movies this year writ large. As the brilliant critic Wesley Morris summarizes it: “There’s Something Weird About This Year’s Oscars” (his capsule descriptions of each movie are very accurate and very much worth reading if you need to catch up on the year in movies). So, why was such an experimental debut film — Wesley again, “as close to ‘avant-garde’ as a best picture nominee has come” — nominated for best picture? What exactly is going on with movies this year?
Was it a Better Year for Movies or for Books?
Last year (films released in 2023 and eligible for the 2024 Oscars) was, upon reflection, an amazing year for film in popular culture. Beyond the Barbie and Oppenheimer of it all, which was hugely significant, there were a half dozen great films that people saw, which generated conversation, and were nominated for Oscars: The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall, Zone of Interest, American Fiction, Maestro, Poor Things, a Miyazaki film, Wes Anderson short films. The list of worthwhile films in 2023 is so long that I had to keep going back to add to the list above as I remembered more and more (and probably still missed many).
In case you missed it, this year, Anora was the big winner at the Oscars, of best picture and also four other awards (including best actress and best director). It is a film that has a lot to like in a conventional-Oscar sense (with the exception of the high level of nudity in the first half of the film) and why you, dear reader who now knows the rules, will be unsurprised to learn that Richard Brody didn’t like it.
And yet, even after winning the most prestigious American film award, Anora doesn’t feel like a big movie. Like Nickel Boys felt like a movie by an artiste, Anora felt like a good version of the type of small budget indie films we’ve had reliably for three decades. A well-written, intimate drama. Stylish. Smart. It’s the kind of movie that is fun to watch and gets you excited about the director and actors involved, but not one that feels like it should be at the pinnacle or has a canvas large enough to be on the artform’s biggest stage.
It’s exceptional that Anora, a movie made for $6 million dollars, won best picture. I want to love the film for that fact, but don’t. Anora isn’t on the same level as other Oscar indie surprises of recent years like Parasite and Moonlight for the simple reasoning that the film just doesn’t have as much to say (on this I finally find agreement with Richard Brody), even if on the surface it tackles serious issues like sex work and wealth inequality. But even if you don’t love Anora, there’s no obvious alternative from this year’s best picture nominees. Most moviegoers aren’t going to feel aggrieved by Anora’s win. I would venture to guess that even for the most controversial film of the year more people know about the controversy (me included) than have bothered to see the film. The indifference tells you all you need to know about how weak the year was for movies.
Like Anora felt like a weaker counterpart to its Oscar Indie predecessors (okay we have been here before a couple of times this decade), the four-hour holocaust drama The Brutalist and the men-in-rooms-drama Conclave also felt like weaker counterpoints to the genre of “Oscar movies” we’re more familiar with. Movies this year felt good not great. And worse perhaps, is that because every movie had mixed reviews, was niche, or both, that even the most likely of consumers (New York publishing professionals) opted out of making regular movie watching or going a habit.
Meanwhile, we had an amazing year in books in 2024. Some great authors writing their biggest, undeniably great novels like Miranda July’s All Fours and Perceval Everett’s James (this year’s Barbenheimer? Okay, that analogy doesn’t hold up at all here.). We got interesting works from many literary authors like Sally Rooney, Rachel Khong, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Kelly Link, Hanif Abdurraqib, Amor Towles, Rachel Kushner. We had breakout commercial hits from seasoned authors like Rufi Thorpe, Alison Espach, and Liz Moore in Margo’s Got Money Troubles, The Wedding People, and The God of the Woods. As well as even a few big debuts like Martyr! and The Ministry of Time. Kristin Hannah’s The Woman was the bestselling novel of last year—even the blockbusters had some substance (not the Demi Moore kind). The 2024 of books was the 2023 of movies—even if you didn’t love every big book (I gave quite a few mixed reviews to the authors mentioned), there was a lot of variety. Books in 2024 had the essence of what culture around art is built on: works that feels significant and that are technically accomplished even if they’re not your cup of tea. Books that are worth reading for the simple fact of participating in the discussions around them or knowing what other people are excitedly talking about.
While artists, critics, and consumers are often continuously pitting commercial juggernauts vs. indie artists, it seems that many times artforms move in tandem rather than in this artificial opposition. Any artform, whether it be books or film, is strongest when there are great examples at the top of the ballot that are made for consumption and when there are artsy indies on the longlist going toe-to-toe with them. Steel strengths steel, and big, commercial, Oscar-bait movies give the indie filmmakers something to work in opposition to and potentially triumph against. Big upsets are at their best when there’s a goliath to take down. Let’s hope 2025 gives us great battles in both books and film to enjoy and argue passionately about.