Oscars 2025: Why ‘Nickel Boys’ should win ‘Best Picture’
With the Oscars drawing nearer and closer to the forefront of our minds, many people are reflecting on the last year of filmmaking and debating who will most likely scoop the coveted prize for ‘Best Picture’. Along with the ‘Best Directing’ award, this has historically been the most prestigious form of external validation and one that most directors would sacrifice their firstborn child to have.
While some pretend that the awards mean nothing (myself included), the sad reality is that award recognition has an enormous impact on the future of a director’s career and subsequent projects that are greenlit. Typically, truly daring and revolutionary projects are entirely shut out of the conversation because projects like these are usually made independently and slip under their radar.
Over the years, the biased and unfair voting practices within the Academy have been exposed. These esteemed members rarely watch the films nominated or care much about the art of filmmaking. They are more concerned about global box office numbers and the same tired sludge that is churned out by the commercial directors who line their pockets. For this reason, I am rooting for one film in particular to win ‘Best Picture’, even though I am doubtful that this will happen.
Within the current climate of filmmaking, it feels nearly impossible for anything of substance to find its way into the mainstream market, with most studios amplifying the mediocre work of directors who make nary an effort to take a risk and do something a bit different. Congratulations to Ridley Flop, who has consistently made the same type of movie for the last 30 years and Netflix’s hollow attempt at an artistic rebrand by working with Jacques Audiard on the worst and most insulting film I have ever seen.
However, among the criminal flops, there have also been some truly innovative films that have disrupted the status quo and exposed the flaws within our corrupt creative system. From the explosive uproar caused by The Substance and the vibrant nuance of Anora, the current nominees prove that there are filmmakers who can reach large audiences through the dissection of a specific experience. In contrast to what some studio executives might think, specificity creates universality and touches more people through a niche and thorough exploration of an experience.
But while I would be happy if either of these movies won, I am pining for Nickel Boys to come out on top. The film follows the lives of two young Black boys who are sent to a brutal reform school in Florida, both for crimes they didn’t commit. Through their friendship, they struggle to survive the violence and cruelty they are subjected to on a daily basis, eventually looking back on their experiences as adults.
I haven’t ever seen anything that comes close to the overall effect of Nickel Boys. Shot entirely in the first person, it creates a distant yet deeply intimate perspective that captures the dehumanising nature of their experiences. It has a hypnotic and dream-like quality that flings you into another world, existing on its own terms and remaining true to its ground-breaking vision, creating a visceral and heart-breaking viewing experience.
This should be the kind of work that the Academy is championing, as it rewrites our perception of these stories by showing this subject matter through a new perspective, going against the limiting and sometimes counter-productive ways that this side of history has been portrayed. If Nickel Boys were to win, it would perhaps signify a new era in Hollywood in which independent filmmaking is being recognised on a wider level and advocating for genuinely creative and avant-garde voices who are creating films unlike anyone else.
