One thing about a period piece is that no matter how brilliantly executed it might be or how relevant to the present it may feel, simply setting a story in the past can't help but keep the audience at a kind of distance.
In doing so, he manages to remarkably chip away at, if not fully erase, the inherent temporal divide between his subjects and the viewer.
Whitehead based Nickel on the Dozier School For Boys, a notorious Florida reform school with a long history of reported abuses. Dozens of unmarked graves have been found on the now-closed school's campus.
A bit sheltered, he believes he can handle the environment so long as he keeps his head down, but he eventually comes to understand these abuses first-hand.
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