Till

Chinonye Chukwu, writer and director of the excellent 2017 drama Clemency), brings the same quiet intensity to this telling of the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a landmark event in the Civil Rights Movement. While the incident in which young Emmett (Jalyn Hall) wolf-whistles at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett), is depicted here; as is his abduction from the home of his aunt and uncle by Bryant's husband and several other men, this film is predominantly told from the perspective of Till's mother. The story tracks the transformation of Mamie Till-Bradley (an exceptional Danielle Deadwyler) from an everyday Chicago secretary and mother to a powerful activist and educator after her son's murder. Her first courageous act was to insist that her son's funeral be open-casket and to allow the publication of photos of his face and body beaten beyond belief so that the world could see what had been done to him. While lynchings and racially motivated murders were common throughout the South for decades, the circumstances and timing of Till's murder and the trial that followed sparked an national discussion about how a 14-year-old could be executed for breaching the social caste system. Groups like the NAACP, embodied here by Roger Guenveur Smith playing Civil Rights leader and mentor T. R. M. Howard, used the event and subsequent trial as a catalyst to attract national attention and change hearts, minds, and laws.

Deadwyler's outstanding performance grounds the picture as its familiar story takes hold in ways I'd not experienced before. Unlike so many biographical docudramas, this deliberately paced picture unfolds with a level of stillness and silence that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat the entire time. Even in the most emotional moments, Chukwu's film and Deadwyler's performance have a repressed quality that encapsulates the way African-Americans had to comport themselves in integrated public spaces, not just in states like Mississippi where this lynching took place, but everywhere in America during this era. The entire cast is in sync with this level of restraint. It’s as if every Black character in the movie, whether in Chicago, Illinois or Money, Mississippi, must breathe thicker air than the Whites. Especially impressive is the way Frankie Faison and Whoopi Goldberg, as Mamie's parents, underplay the intensity of everything that transpires.

Emmett Till's name has lived on for decades, his case and the events surrounding his death continue to be examined and poured over to this day. A good deal of legislation bears his name, including the Emmett Till Antilynching Act approved by Congress the same year as this film's release. Till's story has been told from multiple perspectives: from the songs "The Death of Emmett Till" (1955) by A. C. Bilbrew, and "The Ballad of Emmett Till” (1962) by Bob Dylan; to films like My Nephew Emmett, nominated for Best Live Action Short Oscar in 2018, and countless documentaries including Keith Beauchamp's The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (2003).

Beauchamp serves as one of the producers of Till, and it's interesting that Chukwu, her co-writers, and the producers did not choose to explore the recent claims that Carolyn Bryant recanted much of her story to an interviewer in 2008, stating that she had fabricated parts of her testimony at the trial. There is a whole other story in that, which could have been explored and might possibly have made the ending of Till a bit more effective. The last ten to fifteen minutes of this picture are not as sublime as everything that comes before. We witness an exceptional work of cinema begin to degrade into a standard docudrama with a stirring speech and sweeping strings on the suddenly hyper-present soundtrack. Digging into the story of Carolyn Bryant's testimony would probably have taken the focus away from Mamie and added too many complications to the film's third act. However, the way the filmmakers choose to use her testimony to launch into a truncated climax-conclusion feels like a missed opportunity to bring this story organically into the present day, where the horrific societal issues explored in the film are still very much with us.

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